


The Plague Analysis

by anglophileadventures



Series: Newt garbage can for my Newt trash [2]
Category: The Maze Runner (2014), The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-05 07:18:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3110939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anglophileadventures/pseuds/anglophileadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The events before The Maze Runner, from Newt's point of view.</p><p>Follows book continuity (mostly). Outlined and partially written before The Fever Code came out, so completely not cannon-compliant as far as TFC is concerned, but should be mostly cannon-compliant otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this back when TMR movie came out and I got really into the fandom. I had read all the books (including The Kill Order and the novella The Maze Runner Files, which I used a lot when outlining and trying to determine the timeline) and since there was only one movie at that point I wanted to use book continuity because there was more to work with. However I wasn't happy with the explanation of how WICKED were trying to come up with a cure in the books (in the movies they give a much more satisfactory explanation in my opinion) so this is kind of a fix-it fic in that respect. But mostly it is exploring Newt's character and what he was like before the Maze.  
> I've re-written a lot of the stuff I had written before (chapters 1-8) because I realized I had made some mistakes, and also I wanted to expand more on some of the minor characters. I'll try to add notes at the end of the chapters if there were big changes saying generally what the changes were.

WICKED Memorandum, Date 222.07.15, Time 13:30  
To: Harold Fillmore; CC   
From: Chancellor Kevin Anderson  
Subject: Experimental control subjects

Please allow me to congratulate you on your forethought in the upcoming experiment. Of course we must have control subjects, and several of the individuals you mentioned in your last report show promise as potential controls.  
At this time I am also approving the suggestion that we mislead the controls into believing they are immune. Such a suggestion may shock some of you, but times such as these call for desperate measures. I do not believe any non-immune subjects would agree to participate in the experiment willingly, but this experiment is of the utmost importance and we must have control subjects. I do not need to remind you that the fate of the human race hangs on the success of this experiment.  
I will also impress upon all of you the importance of keeping the controls from catching the Flare virus during the preparation stage. Should they catch the Flare before the proper time, before we are ready to monitor and record everything that happens, all our efforts with this group would be wasted and any data collected would be useless. The controls are the glue that hold this experiment together.

* * *

WICKED Memorandum, Date 224.09.17, Time 08:24  
To: Patricia Wells, Michael Novacek  
From: Chancellor Kevin Anderson  
Subject: Collection of final subject

I am putting the two of you in charge of collecting the final subject. He has undergone all the necessary tests and should be ready to go. After this, we will not be taking on any more subjects, at least for some time, and only if something goes horribly wrong with the Trials. At this time our prerogative is studying the subjects we have as much as possible and preparing the Variables.  
The reason I have put the two of you in charge is that this mission will require some delicacy. You of course know that this final subject is not a Candidate; however, it is imperative that neither he nor his guardian is made aware of that fact, even accidentally. I don’t think I need to remind you how important the controls are to this experiment.  
I know I can count on both of you.

* * *

In a lonely corner of what used to be known as Scotland, a boy and his mother were saying goodbye.  
“Are you all ready to go?” the woman asked, trying her best to fake cheerfulness. She didn’t know how she would go on without her son, but she didn’t want to burden him with her guilt. She knew he was going to a better place, a place where he could have the life he deserved and make a difference in the world. Her boy was special; he had been chosen to be part of the group that were trying to bring aid to a world that needed it more than ever. She tried to remind herself of this over and over as she struggled to hold back her tears, as thoughts of how much she would miss him washed over her. He is special. My boy is special. He deserves better.  
“Suppose I changed my mind,” the boy said tentatively. “Suppose I don’t want to go.”  
“My dear, sweet Neddy,” his mother said, choking back her tears but trying not to let him see. “Why wouldn’t you want to go? This is a wonderful opportunity for you; you’ll get a first-rate education as well as the chance to help save the world! What more could you want?”  
“I want to be here, with you,” Ned answered plaintively. “I don’t want to leave you all alone! Who will take care of you?” A few tears leaked out of his eyes.  
The woman knelt to face him, holding his face in both her hands and brushing his tears away with her thumb.  
“Mothers are supposed to take care of their children, not the other way around.” She smiled softly at him. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me. But Ned,” she said, sounding more serious now, “you’re a very gifted boy, and you have a chance to use that gift to help others. It should be your choice, but I think going with these people and helping is the right thing to do.”  
Ned’s tears fell freely now as he knew what his choice would be. His parents had always instilled in him a strong sense of morals and altruism, but that didn’t make leaving his mother behind any easier. He didn’t know if he would ever see her again, or when.  
“I’ll come back when I’m done,” he promised suddenly, his resolve coming from somewhere deep inside he hadn’t realised he had. “However long it takes, after we find a cure, I’ll come back, and then we can live together forever and be happy.”  
The woman smiled once again at the sweet innocence of her son, but inside her heart was breaking.  
“My precious, beautiful baby.” She only needed to hold the tears back a bit longer, until he had gone. “My lovely, wonderful Neddy. I love you, forever and always,” she said, using their oft-repeated phrase. She gathered her son into one last tight hug, burying her face in his neck in her final goodbye.  
“Forever and always,” he repeated quietly into her shoulder. He felt so tiny and fragile in her arms, too young to be going out on his own into the world, and she remembered holding him for the first time as a baby, looking down on his small form with indescribable joy. She’d had no idea then what the world would become, what they would go through. Perhaps if she had, she would never have brought a child into the world at all.  
They were finally interrupted by the man and the woman who had come to take her son away.  
“I’m very sorry, but we have to go now. We have a long journey ahead of us.” The man said.  
“I don’t suppose you can tell me where you’re taking him?” Ned’s mother asked ruefully.  
“No, but we can tell you it’s somewhere in North America. Somewhere he’ll be safe and he can do the world a lot of good.” The woman answered. Of the two, she seemed to be the more compassionate.  
The man and the woman each put a hand on one of Ned’s shoulders and steered him away from his mother and out of the house that had been Ned’s home. He had both good and terrible memories here, and his emotions upon leaving it were bittersweet. Before the door closed, he twisted around for one last wave goodbye to his mother, and she returned his wave, smiling sadly before the door slammed shut and cut off his view. His emotions upon leaving her were only bitter, nothing sweet about them.  
There was a helicopter waiting outside for them, and as they left the house the motor started up, shattering the peaceful quiet of the countryside and buffeting them with artificial wind as the blades beat the air.  
The man spoke to the woman as they gently but firmly continued to guide Ned towards the helicopter. “His mother said his father taught Calculus before the flares happened. Didn’t Isaac Newton invent Calculus? We don’t have an Isaac Newton yet, we could call this one Isaac.”  
Ned stopped walking abruptly and shifted himself out of their grasp. “Or you could call ‘this one’ his actual name, which is Ned,” he replied, although he knew the man hadn’t been speaking to him. He meant to sound cheerful, but his emotions were still raw from the painful goodbye, and his outbreak came out harsher than he intended. “And Isaac Newton, while a brilliant mathematician, was only one of several people to independently come up with the concept of Calculus.” He thanked his stars that he remembered that tidbit of information from his father’s lessons.  
The man and the woman exchanged a look before turning back to Ned, the man giving what was probably meant to be a reassuring smile but looked more like a pained grimace.  
“At WICKED, we prefer to call our… participants by names other than their original given names, by code names, if you will. We like to use famous scientists and inventors, as a good-luck charm, given the nature of our work. We believe using code names will help our participants start over, begin their new life at WICKED wholeheartedly. With your permission, of course,” he continued, with a sidelong glance at the woman, “we would like to give you the name Isaac.”  
Why did they want him to be disconnected from his past? What kind of people were these unknown WICKED scientists? For the first time, Ned felt pinpricks of doubt arise in his mind. Years later, this moment would come to haunt him. If only he had turned around and gone back inside the house, back to his mother’s loving embrace.  
“Isaac,” Ned tried the name out uncertainly.  
“After Isaac Newton,” the man explained as if Ned hadn’t been there for the entire conversation, smiling like he had just bestowed the most wonderful gift in the world upon Ned. “We thought, given your father’s profession, it was especially appropriate.”  
Ned disliked the name Isaac; it was too foreign, it didn’t feel like it belonged to him at all. And there was no way to shorten it or make a nickname out of it. His parents had always called him Ned or Neddy, and he had grown to like names that could be shortened and familiarised.  
“Newt,” he said finally.  
“I’m sorry?” The man looked at him quizzically. The confusion on his face was almost comical. That is, it would have been, if Ned had been able to find anything funny at such a moment.  
“I don’t like Isaac. You can call me Newt.” And with that, Newt walked off on his own toward the helicopter and his new life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated 2/27/18


	2. arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Newt arrives at the WICKED compound.

Newt disembarked from the helicopter, looking around. His surroundings were surprisingly similar to those he had left behind: green trees, exuding life and a dewy wetness that belied the fact that solar flares had destroyed over half of the earth’s surface.  
“Where are we?” he asked. It was the woman who answered.  
“Alaska. We’ve found that areas of higher latitude were not as critically affected by the solar flares, and the isolation suits our interests.”  
The man seemed in no mood to chat or offer any helpful information. After Newt’s refusal to accept the name Isaac, he had treated Newt with cool reserve, saying nothing beyond what was necessary. Newt hoped he hadn’t made an enemy already.  
“There’s no time to linger,” the man said now. “There is much to do; you’ll need to get settled in and have your orientation. We’ll expect you to jump right in and hit the ground running. Most of the other participants have already been here some time, so you may have some catching up to do.” He ushered Newt inside and led him through a plain, narrow corridor to a room with several bunk beds.  
“This is your dorm, where you will sleep with the other boys your age,” the woman informed him. “There are now ten of you in your group, the nine-year-olds, and two more will be joining shortly, but after that we don’t expect to receive any more new participants.”  
“Why not?” Newt asked, curious.  
“That’s not important—“ the man started to interject, but the woman cut him off.  
“It’s all right,” she said, smiling. “Curiosity is a good thing, especially for future scientists. We won’t be accepting any new participants, no matter how qualified they are, because our participants require a certain amount of training before they can be very helpful, and since we almost have the right number of subjects, we’ll want to focus on preparing those we do have rather than finding more.”  
“Subjects?”  
The woman hesitated, her cheeks reddening. “Well, yes, all of our… helpers will of course double as test subjects, because they are immune and therefore we need to learn as much as possible about them and what makes them immune. Please, follow me.” She swept past Newt, refusing to make eye contact with him, and out the open door, walking quickly down the corridor. The man left after mumbling something about having work to do, but the woman led Newt around the building and began explaining what his everyday schedule would be like.  
“You’ll have lessons every day, in the usual subjects like history, grammar, and literature, but obviously, because of our main goal here, there will be a much heavier focus on science and mathematics. Unfortunately, you’re a bit behind the other boys in your group because most of them have been here a few years and they’ve already covered foundational sciences, but your test results indicated you’re highly advanced in mathematics, so you should have no trouble there.”  
“My dad taught me a lot, before…” Newt trailed off, unsure how to finish the sentence, but the woman nodded, understanding.  
“We’ll have one of the other boys tutor you if you need extra help, but I have a feeling you’ll catch up in no time. You’re very bright, Newt.” She smiled briefly at him before her eyes flickered to the floor.  
Suddenly Newt realised he didn’t know the woman’s name.  
“What’s your name?” he asked her. She glanced up at him. “I feel bad for not asking before,” he explained.  
“That’s quite all right.” She smiled again. “My name is Patricia Wells. The students call me Dr Wells. I’ll be teaching your immunology class, so we’ll see each other every day.” She continued the tour, showing him various classrooms and laboratories. “You’ll also have a virology class, a biochemistry class, and two hours of lab time where you’ll learn the basics of lab procedures so that when the time comes you’ll be fully equipped to further the research we’re doing here.”  
As she talked, Newt felt excitement mingled with nervousness growing within him. He was eager to get started and learn everything he could to help fight the Flare virus, but he was worried he wouldn’t be up to the challenge. What if he was so far behind, he could never catch up, and he was no help to anyone at all?  
“The other boys in your group will be getting out of their final class soon,” Dr Wells continued. “You’ll start taking classes with them tomorrow, so make sure you get a good night’s sleep. I imagine you’ll have some jet lag from the time difference, not to mention you’ve had a full day of travel today.” Newt did feel tired, but his excitement was counteracting the urge to sleep. He hoped he wouldn’t be up all night, and then too tired to pay attention to his lessons in the morning.  
Sure enough, a few moments later a bell rang, and children came flooding out of the classrooms nearby. Newt caught sight of boys and girls of ages ranging from about a year older than him to maybe four years younger, all rushing to take advantage of the few hours of free time after classes were over.  
“Minho!” Dr Wells called, and one of the boys stopped and turned. He looked about the same age as Newt, although he was slightly shorter.  
“Minho’s in your age group, he can finish showing you around. I have to get back to work.” She addressed the other boy. “Minho, make sure Newt gets to all of his classes tomorrow and help him learn how things work around here. I’ll see both of you in class tomorrow.” She flashed Newt one last smile and then turned and walked away. Newt watched her leave apprehensively, then turned back to his new guide. Newt hoped he was nice, but judging by the way he was eyeing Newt up and down and looking slightly disappointed, he wasn’t going to count on it just yet.  
“Hi, I’m Newt.” It was his first time introducing himself in this new style, and his mouth stumbled over the still-unfamiliar name.  
“What kind of a name is Newt?” Minho asked, not bothering to introduce himself, although Newt had already gotten his name from Dr Wells. Newt blushed, feeling self-conscious, but he refused to be cowed.  
“What kind of a name is Minho?” he said instead of answering.  
“I asked you first,” countered Minho. Newt couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not; his expression was unreadable.  
“They named me after Isaac Newton, you know, when they gave me my new scientific name or whatever,” he answered. “Actually they wanted to call me Isaac, but I didn’t like Isaac so I changed it to Newt.”  
“You refused the first name they tried to give you? You changed your name?” Newt couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard the tiniest amount of awe in the other boy’s voice.  
“Yeah,” Newt replied uncertainly.  
A slow smile spread across Minho’s face. “Maybe we will get along after all,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated 2/27/18  
> Minor changes only (mostly to fix some of the awkward writing lol).


	3. WICKED is good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Newt makes several friends but learns WICKED is not all it seems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've added Frypan to the character tags but he'll only be referred to as Siggy here because I read somewhere that was his original name, and I'm assuming Frypan was something they came up with in the Glade, which is after this story takes place.  
> Also, as I've mentioned in a few places, I outlined/wrote a lot of this before The Fever Code came out (which I still haven't read, so even though I've heard a few things here and there, this work mostly ignores TFC), so I didn't know that Newt was supposed to have a sister and Sonya was his sister. I can't really re-write it to be compliant with TFC because a lot of the plot depended on Newt being an only child, so I'm just writing it as if it were still three years ago and TFC hadn't come out yet. In this work Sonya is not Newt's sister. (I'm pretty sure JD retconned that in later anyway, because in TST it makes absolutely no mention of Sonya having an accent, but in TMR it made a big deal about Newt's accent, and wouldn't Newt's sister have a similar accent to him? Maybe it's explained in TFC but I think JD just decided he wanted Newt to have a sister, and wanted it to be a character we already knew and semi-cared about, so he decided to make it Sonya because hey they're both blonde.)

The next day one of the adults on the WICKED staff who Newt didn’t know introduced him to Albert, a boy in the year above Newt. After Albert covered which subjects he would be helping Newt catch up on (basic biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, and physiology), and where and what time to meet him (in the study area, right after their regular classes were over), they had a few minutes to kill before morning classes started, and Albert relaxed into a comfortable chat.  
“So you’re called Newt, huh? Who were you named after exactly? I don’t remember any famous amphibians making important contributions to science or technology.” Albert flashed a friendly grin that Newt returned easily.  
“It’s after Isaac Newton. I shortened it to Newt. It still feels kind of strange to hear people call me that.”  
Albert patted his shoulder reassuringly. He seemed to fall easily into an ‘older brother’ role. “Just give it time, it’ll feel natural eventually.” His mouth twisted wryly. “Although I have to say, ‘Albert’ still feels way too formal for me.”  
“Who were you named after?” Newt asked.  
“Albert Einstein,” Albert answered. “But hey, at least everyone doesn’t have to go around calling me Einstein. I bet some of the boys would refuse!” He chuckled quietly.  
“What if you shortened it?” Newt said, hit with a burst of inspiration. “Like I did with mine? So it feels less formal.”  
Albert tilted his head, considering. “To what, though? What’s short for Albert? Al? I don’t think I feel like an Al.”  
“No, you’re right, you don’t look like an Al,” agreed Newt.  
“Steiny?” suggested Albert, wiggling his eyebrows at Newt. Newt had to clap his hand to his face to keep from bursting into giggles.  
When he could keep a straight face again, Newt took his hand down and thought some more.  
“What about Alby?” he said eventually. “It’s kind of different, but I think in a good way. And it fits you better than just Al.”  
“Alby,” the other boy said experimentally, testing it out. Apparently he liked the sound of it, because he smiled at Newt again and nodded. “Okay. Alby it is. It already feels better than Albert.”  
“Now you just have to convince all the others to call you Alby,” Newt said, laughing.  
Alby rolled his eyes, but Newt could see he was close to laughing too. “Whatever, I’m almost the oldest, so they have to do what I say. And the older kids are huge pushovers anyway.” He shifted slightly, becoming more serious again. “Enough about me; how are you settling in? I know you just got here yesterday, but are you finding your way around alright?”  
“I think so,” said Newt. “It’s a pretty big compound, but all the places I’m supposed to go seem to be close to each other at least. And Minho’s supposed to help me find my classes and show me around and everything.”  
“They gave you Minho as your guide?” Alby sighed. “Could they have chosen anyone less helpful?”  
“He’s not that bad,” Newt protested. He barely knew Minho, but for some reason he felt compelled to defend him.  
“As far as I can tell he doesn’t get along with anyone,” said Alby.  
“Well, he’s been nice to me so far,” Newt replied.  
“Have you met any of the others?” When Newt shook his head, Alby continued, “Nick, George, Harriet and Emilie in my class are all really nice. If you have any trouble, you can go to any of them and they’d help you out. Or me, obviously. But try to stay away from Mark, he can be kind of a dick.” He smiled at Newt again. “I don’t know as many people in your class, but I know Winston and Stephen are solid dudes, and Ada’s nice but she’s also really quiet.”  
“Nick, George, Harriet, Emilie, Winston, Stephen, Ada.” Newt repeated. “Got it. Oh yeah, and Mark’s a dick.”  
“Perfect,” Alby said, giving him a thumbs up. “You’re gonna be fine.”  
Minho appeared in the doorway, holding a large stack of textbooks. “Come on, Salamander boy,” he said, ignoring Alby and handing most of the textbooks to Newt. “It’s time for me to show you where your classes are.”  
“See you after class,” Alby said.  
Newt waved goodbye and left with Minho. As they walked he tried to pay attention to where they were going. After a few seconds, Minho spoke.  
“So, old Al-bert is going to be your special tutor?” He drew out the name Albert, emphasizing the consonants, making it into a caricature.  
“He goes by Alby now,” Newt corrected automatically.  
“Since when?” laughed Minho.  
“Since about five minutes ago,” Newt replied, smiling.  
“What, did you change his name, too?” Minho said in surprise. “Are you going to go around changing everyone’s name? Are you going to start calling me,” he blinked dramatically, “Minnie?”  
Whatever Alby said, Newt was sure this was Minho’s way of being friendly. “Only if you want me to,” he answered in mock sweetness.  
In a more serious tone, he continued, “He said Albert didn’t feel like it fit him, and we decided Alby fit him better.” Minho looked at him, but didn’t say anything. “If they’re going to force us to take these silly names, we might as well make them our own. They can try to erase our old identities as much as they want, but they can’t take away our true selves. Not if we don’t let them.”  
Minho faced forward again, scuffing one foot against the ground as he walked. “You know what,” he said finally, “I think that might be the best thing I’ve heard since coming to this godforsaken place.”  
Minho didn’t say much to him for the rest of the day, but he stayed with Newt and got him to all his classes. Newt didn’t have time to meet most of his classmates, but he tried to listen for the names Alby had told him. He heard one of the boys being called Winston and made a mental note of who he was.

* * *

It was Newt’s third day at WICKED. He was in a cubicle in the study area, three textbooks open and spread out in front of him, pages of notes covered in close lines of his messy, cramped handwriting scattered over the desk.  
Out of the blue, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Startled, he turned around to see a girl standing behind him.  
She waved at him brightly. “Hi, I’m Harriet,” she said. “You’re the new kid, right? Newt?”  
Newt shifted in his chair to face her more easily. “Hi. I sort of know who you are. I mean, I’ve seen you around, and Alby mentioned your name. Yeah, that’s me.”  
As he talked, Harriet’s smile grew wider and wider. “I like your accent,” she said.  
Newt wasn’t sure how to respond to this, so he smiled hesitantly and said, “Thanks, I guess?”  
“It’s been a while since we’ve had anyone new around here. Don’t you do anything except study?”  
“I’m behind in a lot of areas,” Newt explained, “because I got here later than everyone else. I have to catch up to where you all are.”  
“Everyone needs a break every once in a while,” Harriet declared. “Why don’t you come play with some of us? You look like you could use a break.”  
“Play?” Newt said uncertainly.  
“Yes, play,” Harriet said, laughing. “I know we’re all supposed to be geniuses, but we’re still just kids, and that’s what kids do. They play!” She reached down and grabbed his arm, tugging him to his feet. “Come on, it’ll be fun! You can meet a bunch of the girls!”  
Bemused, Newt allowed himself to be pulled along. They left the study area and went down a hall to a large open room with high ceilings. There was a group of around ten girls inside; some were standing around chatting, some were bouncing or throwing balls back and forth, but when Harriet entered with Newt, they all rushed forward to meet them.  
“Everyone, this is Newt,” Harriet addressed the girls. “Newt, this is Lise, Rita, Emilie,” she pointed to each girl as she said their names, “Sally, Ada, Sonya, Sofia, Alessandra, Mary A, Mary J, Mary L, and Marie.” She turned back to Newt. “We know it’s confusing, but apparently there were a lot of scientists named Mary that they thought were worthy of honour.”  
The girls crowded around, each staring unabashedly at Newt. They seemed friendly enough, but he wished they wouldn’t stare at him like that.  
“Sorry, but it’s probably going to take me a while to remember all of your names,” he said.  
When he spoke, a few of the girls giggled. “He does have the accent,” he heard one of them whisper to her neighbour.  
“Are you from England?” one of the girls asked. Newt thought she was the one Harriet had called Alessandra.  
“Technically we lived in Scotland,” he answered, “but my family are from England originally, yeah.” Despite himself, he felt embarrassment heating his face. He didn’t know what to make of all this attention.  
“Sonya’s from England too, aren’t you Sonya?” Harriet said. “She doesn’t have the accent though.”  
A girl with reddish-blonde hair spoke up. “I had it when I first got here, but I was pretty young and I’ve mostly lost it now,” she said mournfully. “Too much time spent listening to you Yanks.” She gave the girl next to her a friendly nudge with her elbow.  
“Newt’s been studying for hours and hours,” Harriet said, once again addressing the girls as a group, “and he needs a break. So let’s show him how we have fun, okay?” She winked at the girls, and they all started running in different directions, gathering items and moving them to designated locations. It looked very organised, as though the girls had done this many times.  
“Sometimes we play regular games, like dodgeball or kickball,” Harriet explained as the other girls continued their work, “but our favourite games are the make-believe games. Today we’re playing the one where we’re trapped on an island, and we’re trying to build a boat to escape, but it takes a long time because we don’t have the right tools. Also there are dinosaurs on the island so we have to run away from them, and we have to get food and shelter somehow to survive.”  
Newt looked at her incredulously. “How many times have you played this game?”  
Harriet grinned at him. “I only came up with this one about a week ago. Before that we were playing the one where we were running away from an evil sorcerer, and before that we were playing the one where we keep dinosaurs in a zoo but they get out of their cages and we have to escape the zoo before they kill us all.”  
Newt gaped at her. “Just how many of your make-believe games involve dinosaurs?” He asked, then laughed. He couldn’t remember the last time he had played a game like this, but he felt something stirring inside him and he knew he couldn’t wait to get started.  
“All the best games have dinosaurs,” Harriet answered. She laughed with him. “Come on, it’s about to start. You can stick with me. Just try to keep up,” she said in a mock-serious tone.  
Half an hour later, Newt went back to his textbooks, but he knew he had made several new friends, and he couldn’t wait to play that game again.

* * *

It was Newt’s fifth day at WICKED. He walked into the study area, looking around for an empty cubicle, but a group of boys sitting at a table caught his eye. He recognized one of them from his class, but he didn’t remember the boy’s name. They appeared to be waving at him. Newt looked around, certain that they were actually waving at someone behind him, but there was no one near him.  
One of them, a boy Newt didn’t recognize, smiled when he saw Newt look around. “Yeah, you,” he called to Newt. “New kid. Come sit with us!”  
Newt hesitated. He had a lot of reading to get through, but on the other hand, he didn’t want the boys to think he was being rude. He walked over to their table, and the boy who had called to him pulled a chair out for him. After Newt sat, they introduced themselves.  
The boy who had called to Newt was Sigmund, and the boy he recognized from his class was Paracelsus. The other two were Jefferson and Galileo. They all greeted him in a friendly manner.  
“I guess Paracelsus and Galileo are self-explanatory,” Newt said, smiling, “but what about you two?”  
“I was named for Thomas Jefferson, but obviously there’s already a Thomas, so I got stuck with Jefferson.”  
“I was named after Sigmund Freud,” said Sigmund, “and I absolutely hate it. I mean, what kind of idiot saddles a kid like me with a name like Sigmund? Sigmund,” he said it slowly, over-pronouncing the ‘g’ and ‘d’ sounds.  
“Yeah, well,” said Paracelsus, “just be grateful it wasn’t worse and you were stuck with Paracelsus.” He shared a longsuffering look with Newt as the other three boys laughed.  
“You know,” said Newt, “you guys could always shorten your names or try to find nicknames. I was supposed to be Isaac, but I changed it to Newt.”  
“You’d really rather be Newt than Isaac?” Jefferson said, still laughing. “At least Isaac is a normal name.”  
“It didn’t fit me,” Newt insisted. “And I like Newt because…” he lowered his voice, glancing around for WICKED staff, “because it’s closer to my real name. The first two letters are the same. So it feels more like me.”  
The other boys stopped laughing and stared at Newt appreciatively.  
After a few seconds’ pause, Jefferson spoke first. “I could be Jeff,” he said. “It’s not that much different I guess, but Jeff at least feels more like a normal name. I’m just annoyed because,” he lowered his voice as well, although there weren’t many people around and they had been speaking quietly to begin with, “my real name is Alex.” He was speaking in the softest whisper now. “And there’s someone else here who’s called Alex. So now I have to call someone else my real name, and it’s not even his real name! And I don’t see why I couldn’t have just been Alex. They could still have said I was named after whoever he’s supposed to be named after.”  
“Yeah, I don’t understand why we had to have new names at all,” said the boy called Galileo. He was quite young; both he and Sigmund were two classes below Newt. “Why can’t I just use my old name?”  
The boys all looked sadly at each other. No one had an answer. They knew what they had been told, that it would help them commit to their new lives, but it seemed like such a flimsy explanation.  
“’Galileo’ is such a mouthful for a little squirt like you,” said Newt, trying to turn the conversation cheerful again. “We could call you Gally instead?” he suggested. The younger boy liked this suggestion, so Newt turned to Sigmund next.  
“Go ahead, miracle worker,” Sigmund said, “I challenge you to find anything even remotely okay-sounding out of ‘Sigmund’.”  
Newt didn’t want to admit defeat, but he agreed there wasn’t a lot to work with. He thought for a beat.  
“What about Siggy?” he said finally. “It’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s probably the best I can come up with under the circumstances.” He looked apologetically at Sigmund.  
“Well, it’s better than Sigmund, I guess,” Siggy laughed. “But I still think I’m ditching this name as soon as I can. No offense, Newt. You did the best you could.”  
“So that just leaves me,” said Paracelsus. “And I don’t think you’re going to have any more luck than you did with Sigmund. It’s pretty much unsalvageable.” He propped his elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand, looking glum.  
But here Newt had a flash of inspiration. “Perry!” he exclaimed. “Perry can be short for Paracelsus. It’s perfect!”  
“Alright,” Perry was nodding, looking much happier. “I think I actually kind of like it!”  
“I think it’s my best work yet,” Newt said, irrationally pleased with himself. The other boys all laughed.  
“So, new kid,” Jeff said. “How are you doing? Do you feel like you’re part of the magic here at WICKED yet?”  
“I’m not sure,” Newt answered soberly. “I’m mostly scrambling to try and catch up on the stuff you guys did before I got here. I mean, I’m supposed to be doing intermediate physiology with you,” he nodded to Perry, “but I haven’t even learned the basic physiology coursework yet. And meanwhile, I’m scrambling to learn all the chemistry and organic chemistry I need to know for our biochemistry course.”  
“They should just put you down in our class,” Gally joked.  
“Ha, I wish,” Newt said. “Then I could be the smartest kid in the class.”  
“And the tallest,” Siggy quipped.  
“Don’t worry, you’ll get there,” Jeff told him. I only got here a year ago, so I had to do what you’re doing now. There wasn’t as much stuff to get through, but it didn’t take me that long. And you seem smarter than me, so you’ll be caught up in no time.”  
“How long have the rest of you been here?” Newt asked, curious.  
“Out of the four of us, I’ve been here the longest,” Perry answered. “I was in the first big group that they brought in, about two and a half years ago. It was mostly the older boys and girls, like Alby, George, Nick, Harriet, Lise, Emilie, and a bunch of others. Then maybe a year later there was another big group with some of the younger kids.”  
“That’s when we came in,” Siggy piped up, indicating himself and Gally.  
“There was another big group a few months after that,” Perry continued, “and there have been some loners trickling in throughout, like Minho and Sonya and you. Usually those are the people who came from far away.”  
“I was a loner too,” Jeff said. “I came from Norway. Well, what used to be Norway,” he amended.  
“I think you’re the last one, they said there wouldn’t be any more after you,” Perry said to Newt.  
Newt happened to notice a boy and girl he had never seen before, even in the cafeteria where they all ate together, being led by some adults, presumably WICKED staff, out in the hallway past the windows of the study area. “Who’s that?” he asked Perry.  
“Oh, that’s Thomas and Teresa.” It was Jeff who answered. “He’s the one I was talking about before, when I said there was already a Thomas. But he’s named after Thomas Edison.”  
“They’re almost always separate from the rest of us,” Perry explained. “They have been ever since I got here. No one knows exactly why, but I think they’re supposed to be sort of our leaders.”  
“How are they meant to lead us if they’re always kept separate?” Newt asked, frowning.  
“Beats me,” Perry shrugged.  
The other boys continued talking, but Newt was only partly paying attention. He was thinking about the boy with sandy brown hair and the girl with jet black hair, and how different WICKED was from what he had expected.

* * *

It was Newt’s second week at WICKED, and once again he was sitting in the study area, hard at work reading and taking notes.  
“I don’t know why you try so hard,” Minho said as he plopped into the seat next to him. After the first few days, Newt could find his way around without any help, but Minho still sought him out, usually at least a few times a day, and they always ate lunch together. “We’re not actually important here. I don’t know what they told you to get you to come, but it was probably mostly lies. They just want to study us; they’re never going to let any of us actually help.”  
“What makes you say that?” asked Newt, looking up from his book.  
“Evidence,” Minho answered. “I’ve been here almost a year, and not only have I never been told what’s going on or what they’re working on for the cure, I don’t know anybody who has. None of us have a clue what they’re up to, and I’m pretty sure they don’t intend to enlighten us.” After a few seconds, he spoke again. “Wait, I lied,” he said, “it’s possible Thomas and Teresa know more about what’s going on than the rest of us. But they, like, barely count.”  
“What do you know about Thomas and Teresa?” Newt asked. “I never even knew they existed until a few days ago.”  
“Probably not much more than you,” Minho admitted. “They spend almost all their time separate from the rest of us. WICKED seems to think they’re Special with a capital S. I’ve heard some of the staff say that they’re going to be our leaders, and some of the other kids think they help with plans and research and stuff. But that could be made up; I’ve never actually spoken to either of them.”  
“Perry said that too, about them being our leaders,” Newt mused out loud. “I wonder why they were chosen? And what exactly they’re meant to lead us to do?”  
“I don’t know,” Minho answered, “but you should see the way the WICKED staff people act around them. They practically worship the ground they walk on.” He smirked.  
“So, why are WICKED teaching us so much science if they never expect us to help?” Newt persisted.  
“Look, I don’t pretend to understand the backwards, complicated mess that is the inner workings of WICKED. I just know what I see in front of me, and aside from the Golden Boy and She Who Can Do No Wrong, they’ve never let anyone in on what the actual research is.”  
Newt didn’t want to admit it to Minho, but what he’d said about WICKED had sown a seed of disquiet inside him. Helping to find a cure for the Flare was the whole reason he’d given up his old life and come to WICKED. It was the reason he’d left his mother behind. Thinking of her now, he felt as though a heavy weight had settled in the pit of his stomach. Had it all been for nothing?

* * *

“They’ve got us surrounded,” Newt whispered to Siggy.  
Siggy peered cautiously over the top of the overturned desk they were crouching behind. “I count at least five of them covering us,” he whispered, flopping back down, “and there’s probably more hidden that we can’t even see.”  
“Where are the others?” Newt asked.  
“Jeff and Marie are already out,” Siggy said, counting on his fingers. “I know Sonya and Ada are still in, but I don’t know if they made it into position yet. Not that it really matters, since our plan is pretty much shot to hell anyway. I don’t know where Emilie is. And Perry defected.”  
“Bastard!” Newt swore.  
“Yeah, he saw his opportunity and he took it,” Siggy said dejectedly. “That’s how we lost so many people so quickly.”  
It was Newt’s turn to peer over the top of the table, ready to duck if anything came flying at him. “It looks like George is leading their main force directly across from us, but Harriet has a small team of snipers up in the tower.”  
A flash of movement caught his eye. It was Sonya and Ada, sneaking up the tower to ambush Harriet and her snipers! Newt didn’t think anyone had noticed them yet, but they were in full view if anyone happened to look their way. Newt knew he had to keep the other team’s attention away from Sonya and Ada.  
Quickly he dropped down again and turned to Siggy. “What do we have left?” he asked.  
“Not much,” Siggy answered grimly. “A handful of long-distance shots, a couple dozen medium-distance shots. Oh and one more grenade.”  
“I’ll take the medium shots; you’re better at long-distance shooting than me,” Newt said quickly, his mind whirring. “We have to make sure their focus is completely on us. But don’t get hit!” Siggy nodded, determination creasing his brow. Each boy grabbed his weapon, and with only one last nervous glance at each other, popped up into standing position and started firing rapidly.  
The excitement got to Siggy and he started yelling, a wordless roar, part fear and part intimidation tactic. Newt joined in; anything to keep the others looking at them and not at Sonya and Ada.  
The others were so shocked that at first they were slow to take cover, and Newt thought he might have actually hit a few. But soon they were all ducking behind walls and overturned tables, and Newt’s shots whizzed harmlessly overhead. He was almost out of ammo.  
He dived back behind their flimsy sanctuary, Siggy diving with him. Both boys were panting as adrenaline coursed through their systems.  
“Do you think it worked?” Siggy asked.  
“I guess we’ll find out,” Newt replied. Carefully he leaned his head to look around the table, trying to expose as little of himself as possible.  
There was a commotion in the tower, but he couldn’t see what was happening. Then in the window: Sonya! She waved to him and Siggy and gave them a thumbs up. Sonya and Ada had managed to take out Harriet and her snipers and they had the tower!  
“They did it!” he said, excited but hushed, and he and Siggy laughed and high-fived. Newt felt elated, but he knew their slight advantage wouldn’t last long. If George decided to storm the tower, Sonya and Ada wouldn’t be able to hold them off for long, and he and Siggy were nearly out of ammo.  
He turned to Siggy. “We have to move soon, before they go for Sonya and Ada.”  
“I’m all out,” said Siggy, indicating his long-distance weapon.  
“You take this one,” Newt handed him the medium-range weapon. “Hopefully Sonya and Ada have enough left to cover us from the tower. You cover me from the ground, and when I’ve taken out their main force, you should just be able to make it to their home base.”  
“And how exactly are you going to take out their entire main force by yourself?” Siggy asked dubiously.  
“With this,” Newt picked up the grenade.  
“But how are you going to make it out before it goes?”  
“I’m not.” Newt grinned. “That’s why I need you to watch yourself. One of us has to make it to their home base, or we lose anyway and this was all for nothing.”  
“I don’t know about this…” Siggy began.  
“We’re pinned down and nearly out of ammo, this is our only shot! And if we don’t take it soon, it’ll be too late. We have to go.” Newt scooped up the empty long-distance weapon. Maybe if he pretended to be shooting from it, the other side wouldn’t notice it wasn’t actually firing anything. “It’s now or never, Siggy. C’mon, let’s go.”  
His heart racing, Newt jumped up and started running towards the closest bit of cover in the direction of George’s main force. A split second later, he heard Siggy follow him, occasionally taking carefully-aimed shots at the others. Newt could hear Sonya and Ada firing from above, keeping the other team scrambling for shelter and unable to shoot at Newt and Siggy. He hoped their ammo held out.  
Newt and Siggy flopped down flat-out on the ground, hiding behind rubble. They caught their breath for a few seconds and then they were up again, running for the next closest cover. They ran from shelter to shelter until they were only a few feet away from the small structure where George was holed up with most of the others.  
“Alright, this is it,” Newt said. “Good luck, Siggy.”  
“Good luck, Newt,” Siggy replied solemnly.  
Newt pulled the pin on the grenade and then sprinted full-out towards the structure, counting as he went. He had ten seconds from pulling the pin until the grenade went off. He could feel shots whizzing past him, dangerously close, but none of them hit.  
He ran through the doorway, and instantly several crouched, hiding figures straightened up and began to take aim at him. Newt tossed the empty weapon at Sofia and Gally to distract them, but less than a second later he was hit from behind anyway by George, Perry and Sally all at once.  
“Ha! You’re dead!” George shouted. “That was pretty dumb, how were you planning to take us all out with an empty weapon?”  
Suddenly Gally spotted what Newt was holding. “He’s got a grenade!” he screamed.  
But it was too late. The grenade exploded, sending bright green paint everywhere. Newt was absolutely covered from head to toe, and everyone inside the structure had enough paint on them to be out of the game.  
For a few seconds everyone just stared at each other. Then George started laughing; soon everyone in the room had joined in.  
A moment later they heard Siggy yelling, “I made it to your home base! It’s over, we won!” and they all trooped out of the structure. Everyone on both teams, ‘dead’ or alive, were making their way into the open, some crawling out from under rubble, some climbing down from towers, some standing up from behind more overturned tables.  
George, still chortling, slapped Newt on the back. “That was a pretty gutsy plan,” he said in admiration.  
Perry ruefully wiped green paint out of his eyes. Siggy ran up to him. “That’s what you get for being a traitor,” he crowed, waving his finger in Perry’s face.  
Perry slapped his hand away but smiled. “I should’ve known this would happen. I’m always on the losing team. Maybe next time,” he sighed.  
When everyone had gathered, George called out, “The Blue team wins, thanks in large part to the self-sacrificing efforts of Newt.”  
“Thanks, but I couldn’t have done anything without my teammates covering me, Siggy and Sonya and Ada,” Newt said, embarrassed. It had been a team effort, after all.  
Newt’s team rushed up to him, cheering him and patting him on the back.  
“Well done, Newt!” said Sonya happily.  
“Yeah, great job! Way to take one for the team!” cheered Emilie, smiling broadly at him.  
Newt decided it was a good thing he was painted entirely green, so his teammates couldn’t see him glowing with embarrassment. He smiled sheepishly. “Really, I couldn’t have done it without you guys covering for me,” he said again.  
“Alright, let’s go get cleaned up and get all this paint off us before dinner!” George said, and everyone started filing out of the door. “And don’t forget to put all the weapons back in the weapon room!” George called as they were leaving.  
Newt took his weapon and headed towards the weapon room, picking up stray empties on the ground as he went.  
Harriet jogged up to him. “That was some game, huh? You made a great run there at the end. I’m just mad I got taken out before, or I definitely would’ve stopped you.” She smiled at him, but her look held a challenge.  
“Oh yeah?” he countered jokingly. “Well, we’ll never know for sure, will we, because you got taken out by Sonya and Ada even though you outnumbered them at least two to one. So much for your elite sniper team,” he baited her.  
“Hey!” Harriet shrieked, slugging him in the arm. “It wasn’t a fair fight, they snuck up on us!”  
“Oh, I see,” said Newt in mock seriousness. “Next time we’ll send you a warning beforehand, nice and polite. ‘We will be attacking you soon. Please be prepared.’”  
Newt and Harriet both chuckled. They had reached the weapon room, and returned the weapons they were holding to their proper places.  
“I’ll see you at dinner,” Harriet said cheerfully, then jogged away. She turned back and waved at him just before she turned the corner out of sight.

* * *

“So try to get through the next three chapters of the chemistry book I gave you by the end of the week, and we’ll meet again to talk it over,” Alby said. “You’re making pretty good progress, so I think we’ll be able to finish up chem after about two more weeks, and then you just need a few more weeks to wrap up physiology.”  
Almost without Newt realizing it, he had passed three months at WICKED. Newt had never worked so hard in his young life; he felt like all he did was read and study all day, except for the brief moments two or three times a week when he found time to play games with the other kids. He was exhausted most of the time, but he hoped that by learning as much as he could he would soon be able to make a significant contribution to WICKED’s cause. Despite what Minho had said, he hadn’t yet given up on his hope of helping.  
“How long have you been here?” he asked Alby at the end of their session.  
“Nearly three years now,” Alby answered matter-of-factly. “I was in the first big group they brought here. Only Thomas and Teresa have been here longer.”  
Encouraged by that factoid, Newt continued, “and have you started participating in the actual research yet? When do we get to start that?”  
Alby looked at Newt for a few seconds before answering, considering. Newt waited tensely, feeling like he was being judged.  
“You’ve only been here a few months,” Alby finally said. “I don’t want to disillusion you already. But none of us, except for Thomas and Teresa, have ever been involved in the research, and I don’t think they ever intend to let the rest of us.”  
“Ever?” Newt asked incredulously. A cold numbness started in his belly and spread out to his extremities.  
“When we first got here, there was this big show of us being involved in animal trials. Infecting mice and dissecting their brains after they died, looking at it under a microscope, that sort of thing,” Alby told him. “They tried to build it up like we were so important because we were the only ones who could safely work with the virus, because we’re immune. But then after a few weeks they stopped it with no explanation, and they never made any more attempts to pretend to include us. Thomas and Teresa are the only ones our age that actually know what’s going on, the rest of us don’t have a clue.”  
“But they told me… they told me we would be helping find the cure. That was part of the reason I came, to help. And Dr Wells, when she showed me around the first day…” Newt was having trouble getting the words to come out.  
“They told you that you were important, because they knew it was the only way to get you to come. Don’t feel bad, they did it to all of us. They lied to you, Newt.” Alby was looking at Newt with something close to pity on his face. “We’re just here as test subjects.”  
“Thomas and Teresa—” Newt began.  
“I don’t know about them,” Alby interrupted. “Maybe they’re special somehow, or maybe they just chose them to be in charge of the rest of us, like their pets to help keep us under control. I don’t really care. All I know is that pretty much everything WICKED have ever told me has been a lie.”  
“So why are you still here?” asked Newt.  
Alby gave him a strange look, as though the answer should have been obvious. “Got nowhere else to go,” he replied. Newt wondered what could have happened to Alby to give his voice that sad, broken quality.

After Alby left, Newt stayed in the study area to continue his reading. He had his textbook propped open in front of him as usual, but his heart wasn’t in it. He kept reading the same paragraph over and over without comprehending what it said. It was with relief that he looked up and saw Harriet making her way towards him. He waved at her and did his best to force a smile.  
“Hi, Harriet.”  
“Hey, Newt. What’s up?” Like Minho, Harriet found some excuse to talk to Newt most days, not that he minded. Harriet seemed to be the mastermind to most of the games, and Newt enjoyed being included.  
Newt gestured to his book. “Reading.”  
“For a change,” Harriet joked.  
“Hey Harriet,” Newt said after a moment, “you’ve been here a while, right? When you first got here, did they tell you that we’d be helping find the cure? Like, helping with the actual research and stuff?”  
“Yeah, they said that at first,” Harriet answered nonchalantly. “It didn’t really happen that way though.”  
“And that doesn’t bother you?” Newt asked incredulously. “That they basically lied to you, and got you here under false pretences?”  
“Not really,” Harriet said. “I mean, I guess it does bother me that they lied, just because I hate being lied to. But I didn’t come here to be the saviour of humanity. I came here because it’s one of the only safe places left.” When Newt didn’t say anything, she kept going. “Look, where I came from, shit got dangerous real fast. I lost my entire family, and for a while all I cared about was making it from one day to the next. But when I found out I was immune and WICKED brought me here, I found a new family. All the other kids here, they’re my family now. And that includes you too.” She smiled gently at him and rubbed his arm affectionately. Seeing he still looked dejected, she added, “And hey, if helping find the cure really means that much to you, you’re still helping just by being here as a subject. They need immunes to study.”  
When Harriet left, Newt kept thinking about what she said, and what Alby had said. Maybe most of the people here had no one to go back to, but his mother was still alive, and so well isolated he thought she stood a good chance of avoiding the Flare, so his reasons for being here mattered a great deal.  
He thought more about what Harriet had said about helping just by being here as a subject. As he was thinking the word, it sparked in him a memory of what Dr Wells had said when she gave him the tour. She had called the immune children ‘subjects,’ even though she insisted they were participants and that they served a dual purpose. Newt remembered her reaction after he had questioned her word choice: she had seemed embarrassed, refused to meet his eye. Maybe it was because she knew she was lying to him, and she felt uncomfortable about it. Newt resolved to speak to her the next day after class. At the very least, he could observe her reaction and ty to discern if she was lying or not.

The next day, Newt lingered at the end of his immunology class.  
“Come on, let’s go,” Minho stood next to him. “It’s chicken casserole today, my fourth least favourite.”  
Newt shook his head quickly. “You go ahead, I have to talk to Dr Wells about something. I’ll see you in a few minutes.” Minho shrugged, then walked off.  
“Dr Wells?” Newt spoke hesitantly. He didn’t want to offend her; she was actually one of his favourite teachers. But he needed to know the truth, and he had a feeling she was helping to hide it from him.  
“Oh, hello, Newt,” Dr Wells answered cheerfully as she arranged her things, preparing to leave the room herself. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you. Alby says you’re making very good progress, and he thinks you should be all caught up in another two or three months. I must say, we’re all very impressed with how much you’ve covered in such a short time. All the children here are above average, of course, but sometimes it still surprises me just how quick some of you are.” She smiled fondly at him. Newt let her go on, unsure how to begin his question and losing his nerve with every kind word Dr Wells said. “I can tell you’re a very hard worker, and you must have a large amount of personal motivation. We really appreciate your dedication to our work here at WICKED.” Newt felt terrible. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything.  
Dr Wells looked up from her things, her brow creased. “Was there something in particular you wanted to ask me?”  
Newt opened his mouth. “Umm,” he croaked. He cleared his throat and began again.  
“When are we going to start actually helping with the research on the Flare virus?” he managed to get out.  
“Oh,” Dr Wells said, her face falling. “Probably not for some time yet, Newt,” she said gently. “You have come a long way, but there’s still so much to learn before you’ll be ready to help us.” Once again, her gaze shifted to the floor, and she would no longer look him in the eye.  
“But we will help eventually?” Newt persisted. “Because some of the others have been saying WICKED never intended to let us help, that we’re just test subjects.” It came out in a rush, and Newt waited anxiously to see how Dr Wells would respond.  
Without raising her eyes, she answered quickly, “Yes, of course you’ll all help eventually, just not yet.” She grabbed her briefcase and headed swiftly towards the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot to get done before my next lecture.” Finally her gaze lifted to meet his. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Newt,” she said kindly, but with a hint of sadness, before leaving him alone in the classroom.  
Newt walked to the lunchroom in a daze, finding the seat Minho had saved for him.  
“What’s up?” Minho asked as he sat down heavily. “You look kind of out of it.”  
“You were right,” Newt whispered, staring straight ahead. “You were completely right. They never wanted us to help. It was all a lie.”  
“What are you talking about?” Minho demanded.  
Newt slowly turned to face him. “I talked to Dr Wells, about when we would help with the research. She was obviously lying. You were right about WICKED, about all of it. They don’t want us to help. They just want to use us.” He was finding it hard to get his brain to work properly. Knowing WICKED had lied to him made him angrier and angrier the more he thought about it.  
“Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to destroy your faith in the world. I just call it like I see it.” Minho seemed genuinely worried about Newt. “It’s ok, though. At least we have somewhere to live and plenty to eat. And hey, sometimes the shit they teach us is interesting.”  
Newt barely heard him. His thoughts were in turmoil. Had he left his mother for nothing?  
No, not for nothing, he decided. He could still be useful, even if he wasn’t directly involved in finding a cure. As Harriet had said, he was still helping find a cure by allowing WICKED to study him. The cure, after all, was the most important thing in the world right now. Newt grasped onto that thought and held it, the only thing keeping him from drowning.  
“You know what?” he said suddenly. “It doesn’t matter.”  
Minho looked relieved. “Sure. Who cares what WICKED does, as long as we get what we want out of them?”  
“That’s not what I meant,” said Newt. “I mean, it doesn’t matter if I directly help find the cure, as long as someone is finding the cure. It’s ok that I’m not important; I don’t have to be the centre of everything. I can still help by being a test subject. They need to study those of us who are immune, use that information to find a cure. I’m happy to just be a test subject if it means finding a cure for everyone.”  
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, dude,” Minho answered, slapping him on the back. “I’m just glad you aren’t believing their lies anymore. You’re way too smart to let yourself get duped like that.”  
“Do you think it’s possible?” Newt asked Minho. “Finding a cure?”  
“Maybe,” Minho reluctantly replied. “I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter to me. I have no one left that I care about.” Minho turned away from Newt, clearly not wanting to say any more, but Newt couldn’t let it go.  
“Really?” He asked. “What happened to them?” He had never talked to Minho about their home lives before coming to WICKED, and only heard a few snippets in passing from others.  
“What else? They died,” Minho answered without turning back to face Newt. He resumed eating, saying no more. This time Newt took the hint and didn’t try to get any more out of him.  
Together they finished their meal in silence, then continued about their day as though nothing had changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated 2/27/18  
> Lots of changes on this one. I decided I needed to flesh out a bunch of the minor characters, because there was a scene I was trying to write (for later on) where Newt is worried about a bunch of characters, but I realized it didn't really work because up to that point we'd only seen him interacting with Alby and Minho for the most part so we have no reason to care about these other characters. So basically all the scenes where Newt is talking to any of the kids who aren't Alby or Minho were added in; some of these scenes I had planned for later but I decided putting them here made more sense, and some of them I came up with this time around.  
> I guess this is what I get for being impatient and posting before I had finished the work.


	4. brains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Newt undergoes brain surgery.

Newt was finishing his seventh month at WICKED, and had finally finished making up for his late start, which meant he had a bit more free time and less studying. He had found he quite liked studying with Alby, even now that he no longer needed the extra help, and the two boys could often be found near each other in the study area after their regular classes. He also continued playing games with many of the other kids, especially Harriet, who continued to seek him out and spend time with him. Similarly, Minho tended to gravitate towards him, and Newt found himself spending a lot of his free time with Minho, reading in silence or chatting about various assignments or lectures.  
His life at WICKED had settled into a kind of routine.  
The children studying at WICKED were split into groups by birth year from September to September, like an ordinary school. The groups were referred to by their approximate age, although every September they would advance to the next ‘grade level’ all together, no matter when each individual’s actual birthday was. Newt himself had passed his tenth birthday, but was still considered part of the ‘nine-year-old’ group, and would be until his group advanced in two months’ time. All in all, there was nothing much to differentiate it from a regular school system, albeit with slightly smarter-than-average occupants.

* * *

Newt and Minho were sitting together in the study area, working on their calculus homework. Two other boys from their class, Winston and Zart, approached them.  
“Hi, Newt,” Zart greeted him. “Hi, Minho.” Minho looked up and nodded at him, then returned to the problem he was working on.  
“So Newt,” Winston said, leaning with his hands on the table, “now that you’re all caught up and don’t have to do extra studying, we were hoping you might be able to help us out.”  
“Help you out with what?” Newt asked amiably.  
“You’re like, really advanced in math, right?”  
“I guess so…” It was true that he had already learned most of what they were taught in the calculus lectures from his father, and did not find many of the assignments difficult.  
“It’s just, we’re having some trouble with the calculus homework,” said Zart, “and we were hoping you would help us.”  
“Sure,” answered Newt, slightly surprised. “We’re actually working on it right now, you can join us.”  
The two boys sat, and Newt tried his best to answer their questions and explain the concepts they had difficulty with. He wasn’t at all sure if he was doing a good job, but most of the time it seemed they only needed things explained to them over again, in a slightly different way than the lecturer had done, and they understood it. Minho didn’t say a word the entire time they were there.  
When they had gone through all of the assigned problems, Winston and Zart both stayed a little longer, pulling out some anatomy notes to study.  
Newt caught a glimpse of a drawing Winston had made of the muscles in the canine forelimb. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “Winston, you drew this? It’s incredible!” Even though it was just muscles along with a few blood vessels, all carefully labelled in Winston’s neat script, it somehow was a work of art. “I didn’t know you could draw,” Newt said, impressed.  
“Oh, yeah,” Winston ducked his head in mild embarrassment. “Drawing it out helps me remember it better. Anatomy’s my favourite subject; it’s the only one I’m any good at,” he laughed.  
“This is really cool,” Newt said, flipping through more of Winston’s anatomy notes. He couldn’t stop praising the drawings, and soon Winston was glowing with pride.  
“How about you, Zart?” Newt asked. “Is anatomy your favourite too?”  
“It’s ok,” Zart answered. “I don’t think it’s my favourite. I like the literature class we have, even though we don’t get to spend as much time on it as the science subjects.”  
“You like reading?” Newt said, smiling.  
“I love reading,” Zart said, his eyes coming alive. “And I really like making up my own stories. Especially stories with anything magical. I used to want to be a writer.”  
“Used to?”  
“Well, I guess now I have to be a scientist, don’t I?”  
“Maybe you could be a scientist who also writes,” Newt suggested. “Or who knows, after a cure is discovered and WICKED saves the world, maybe you won’t have to be a scientist at all and you can write as much as you want.”  
Minho snorted almost imperceptibly; luckily Newt didn’t think either Zart or Winston had heard. Zart was still looking down at his notes, a slight smile on his face, perhaps thinking about a future in which the Flare was cured and he was free to write all the fantasy stories he could come up with.  
“You know,” Newt suggested tentatively after Winston and Zart left, “if you were just a tiny bit nicer to the other kids, it would probably help you make more friends.”  
“I’m not here to make friends,” Minho scoffed. “Besides, what do I need any of these dumbasses for anyway?”  
“See, that’s exactly what I mean,” Newt said, holding in a laugh. “Do you have to call them dumbasses?”  
“I do if they can’t even do math,” Minho muttered under his breath.  
“Sometimes I wonder,” Newt said, “if Dr Wells didn’t choose you to be my guide on purpose so that you’d make a friend.”  
“Yeah, I thought that too,” said Minho. “And at first I had decided not to like you just to spite her. But I don’t know, you kind of surprised me I guess.”  
“Surprised you how?” Newt asked, amused.  
“I don’t know,” Minho said again. “It seems like you think for yourself more than a lot of the kids here. Especially the ones who have been here the longest, they just go along with whatever stupid thing WICKED says. But like, with the name thing, how you changed the name they gave you, and you got other people to change their names too. Did you know Zart was Mozart before you got here? If you think something is stupid, you just ignore it and do what you want to do. I like that. And also,” Minho continued, “you just annoy me less than everyone else. I don’t know why, but you do.”  
“Well, thanks, I think,” Newt laughed. Sometimes Minho surprised him, but Newt did genuinely enjoy his company.  
As they sat the next hour reading in silence, Newt thought that perhaps the best thing about Minho was that they could just sit in silence sometimes. Being with Minho didn’t require any more energy than being by himself.

* * *

One morning, to everyone’s surprise, Thomas and Teresa made an appearance. They gathered all the age groups, both boys and girls, to make an announcement.  
Teresa spoke first. “As you all know, the reason we’re here is to help find a cure by figuring out what makes us different, why we’re immune.”  
Newt’s ears perked up. Were they finally going to be let in on what was being done towards finding a cure?  
“Some of the WICKED scientists need to perform a procedure on us,” she continued.  
“We don’t want you to freak out, but it’s on our brains,” Thomas put in. Predictably, many students, especially the youngest, began to freak out. Teresa shot Thomas a withering look. Many voices spoke out at once, but there were too many to make sense of what anyone was saying.  
“Everyone just calm down!” Teresa raised her voice. “It’s just a biopsy, nothing to panic about.”  
“It would be ‘just a biopsy’ if it was of our livers or lungs or something, but you’re talking about our brains!” Emilie shouted over all the other outcries.  
Thomas spoke quickly, “I know it seems scary, I don’t really want anyone messing with my brain either, but this is what we signed up for, remember? They need brain neurons from immunes to infect with the virus and study how they interact.”  
From across the crowd of alarmed children, Newt and Minho exchanged a glance, but otherwise neither of them acknowledged the allusion to Thomas and Teresa’s secret research in the upper levels of WICKED.  
Gradually the furor quieted as people’s concerns were addressed.  
“How big of a piece are they taking?” demanded Sonya.  
“Only a tiny piece,” Thomas reassured her. “Really all we need are a few cells. It won’t cause any damage, I promise.”  
“What if something goes wrong?” a younger boy asked fearfully.  
“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” Thomas replied, trying to sound optimistic and smiling to comfort the worried boy, but he wasn’t convinced yet.  
“How can you be sure?” he asked, sounding close to tears.  
Teresa went up to the boy, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder.  
“With every surgery, there’s always some risk, but they’re going to be very careful, and it’s only a very tiny piece that they’ll be taking. We’ll be undergoing the same procedure. There’s really no reason to worry.”  
Newt watched Teresa, who kept talking to the younger boy, bolstering his confidence and soothing his fears. Newt appreciated her honesty about the risk, even if that was the only bit of truth he could count on.  
Minho had made his way to Newt’s side.  
“I’m not letting them do anything to my brain,” he said quietly. “How about you?”  
Newt looked at him, surprised. “I don’t know if we really get a say. It sounded more like they were informing us than asking our permission.”  
“I’ll refuse, I don’t care if they ask my permission or not. I just can’t stand the thought of them standing over me with my skull cracked open, messing around with my brain.” Minho shuddered. Newt hadn’t thought anything could really get to Minho, but apparently he had been wrong.  
“I don’t think our skulls will be ‘cracked open’ exactly,” Newt mused. “It’ll probably be a tiny hole at most, so they can just stick a needle in and grab what they need.”  
Minho gave Newt a revolted look. “Dude. What’s wrong with you?”  
Newt laughed. “I guess I just don’t get squeamish thinking about brains, I don’t know.” He sobered quickly. “But seriously, I don’t think they’ll give you a choice. I don’t want you to make trouble for yourself.”  
“Trouble is my middle name,” scoffed Minho. “But keep your hair on. I’ll let them do their super-important brain surgery, as long as I’m anaesthetised the whole time and I don’t have to know or think about what’s happening.” Newt smiled, glad Minho wouldn’t cause a huge conflict. He himself didn’t mind the biopsy, but he did wish Thomas and Teresa could have let them know more about what progress had been made so far and what they were hoping to learn from the biopsies.  
The brain biopsies were to take place immediately, a few groups at a time. They were informed that it wouldn’t take long; the surgeon would drill a hole in the back of their skull, stick a needle in, harvest a few cells, and then they would be patched up and sent back to their dorms to rest. They would have the rest of the day off.  
“How generous of them,” Minho quipped.  
As they were being lined up to go into surgery (oldest to youngest), Newt and Minho found themselves near Thomas and Teresa, who were having what was probably meant to be a private conversation. They stood off to the side, speaking in lowered voices, but despite these precautions Newt could make out what they were saying. He looked at Minho, and knew by the look he was at that moment giving Newt that he could hear them too. Newt stood still, focusing on their words, not feeling the slightest bit guilty about eavesdropping. After all, they were withholding information from him, and he had a sudden urge to find out as much about it as he could.  
“…discover something new about the virus, we might not need the maze trials at all,” Thomas was saying. His hopeful, over-eager tone of voice struck Newt as unusual. This was not the careful, guarded Thomas he was used to.  
“I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you,” Teresa admonished him. “If there was an easy answer, we would have found it by now. We’ll look at the biopsies to be thorough, but I don’t think for a second that we’ll get out of having to use the maze.”  
“How can you be so cold about it?” His emotions getting the better of him, Thomas’s voice grew louder. “I can barely stand the thought of making anyone go through that.”  
“I know, but….” As if to make up for Thomas, Teresa lowered her voice even more, enough that Newt couldn’t make out what she said next, but there was no way he could have missed Thomas’s next outburst.  
“I’m so sick of hearing that, Teresa! WICKED is good, whatever that means! How can they be good if they—” Teresa hastily shushed Thomas, looking around to see if anyone had heard his whisper-shout. Newt and Minho quickly looked away, trying to appear as innocent as possible. Newt had assumed Teresa and Thomas were the complete puppets of WICKED, but it sounded like Thomas at least had some concerns.  
“What do you think that was about?” Newt whispered to Minho. “Maze trials, what does that mean?”  
“I don’t know, I heard the same thing you did, remember?” Minho answered sharply, then immediately looked chastened. “Sorry, it’s just frustrating. I’m mad at them, not you.” Minho waved his hand vaguely above his head, indicating ‘them’ was all of WICKED, or else everyone in the immediate area except Newt.  
“I know. I wish we could have heard the rest of what they were saying,” Newt said wistfully. “He actually sounded like he was disagreeing with WICKED, or their methods at least.”  
“Maybe he’s not a total idiot,” Minho agreed.  
“I really wish there was some way to find out what they were talking about, what they meant by ‘the maze,’” Newt mused again.  
Minho frowned, thoughtful. “There might be a way,” he said slowly. “Let me think about it for a while. I’ll get back to you after.” He seemed unwilling to directly mention the soon-to-come brain surgery. Newt had the faint hope that thinking about whatever undoubtedly nefarious plan he was hatching would help distract Minho from his fear of having his brain messed with.

When it was his turn to undergo the surgery, Newt was surprised to find that he did in fact feel a little nervous. He was led to the operation room by Stuart Holland, one of their lab teachers. He had always seemed nice, telling the students to call him Stuart. It was a nice gesture, but Newt felt strange calling an adult by their first name.  
It was a long walk, going several levels into the underground area of the WICKED facility. Newt had heard rumours of miles and miles of underground facilities, including areas so large they could be made to look like they were outside. Newt wondered how much of it was true.  
After a while, Stuart tried to make small talk.  
“You’re Newt, aren’t you?” he asked, and Newt nodded in reply. “You’re the one who was pulling out the differential equations the second week to solve that problem about the pressure in the heart.”  
“It was the simplest way to solve the problem,” Newt said hesitantly, unsure if he was being made fun of or not.  
“Oh, sure, nothing simpler than differential equations,” Stuart’s face twitched like he was trying not to smile.  
“Well, when you understand the principles, it actually is a lot simpler to use—” Newt began, then gave up as Stuart burst out laughing. It wasn’t a cruel laugh; the way he caught Newt’s eye as he chortled invited Newt to laugh as well, and after a moment he did, amused by Stuart’s amusement.  
“You sure pissed off David,” Stuart said, still snickering. David Trent was another lab teacher, who was not nearly as easy-going as Stuart. Mr. Trent had not been amused by Newt’s stunt in class.  
Laughing with genuine amusement had the fortunate side effect of banishing Newt’s modest nervousness, and he was able to submit to the preparations with minimal unease. A small area on the back of his head was shaved and swabbed with antiseptic.  
“Dr Hans will be the lead surgeon. He’s an expert on this particular procedure, he’s done it many times before,” one of the doctors explained. The name on his scrubs identified him as Dr Quall.  
“You’ll be awake the whole time,” the anaesthesiologist told Newt as he prepared to administer a local anaesthetic, “so we can talk to you and make sure everything’s still working the way it’s supposed to.”  
“What are you thinking might not work the way it’s supposed to?” Newt asked apprehensively, some of his anxiety returning.  
“It’s just a precaution,” the anaesthesiologist assured him. “It’s standard procedure for all brain surgeries. We don’t expect anything to go wrong, it’s a very simple procedure, even though it’s in your brain.”  
Stuart headed for the door. “I’ll be waiting outside to take you back once you’re all through here,” he told Newt. Suddenly Newt felt a stab of fear. He didn’t want to be left alone with these doctors, who treated him politely but distantly. To them he was just one of several children they were operating on today. He wanted at least one person in the room who knew his name, who knew him at all, even if it was only superficially.  
“Can he stay?” Newt burst out, ashamed to admit his fear.  
Stuart paused at the door; the doctors looked at each other, considering.  
“Usually we want as few extra people in the operating room as possible,” one of them said, “but I guess he can help talk to you so we can monitor your brain activity.”  
Newt breathed a sigh of relief. He held still for the injection of local anaesthetic; it was a sharp stab at the back of his neck that quickly became a painful, disconcerting awareness of the anaesthetic being pushed into his skin and muscle. Soon, however, the numbness spread from the point of injection, and he couldn’t feel when they cut into his flesh and peeled it back to expose a tiny scrap of his skull. He could hear everything though, which was unnerving to say the least, especially when the drill started up.  
“How are you doing, Newt?” Stuart asked as the stench of Newt’s smoking bone filled the room.  
“Fine,” Newt answered. It wasn’t too far from the truth; this wasn’t the most pleasant thing he’d ever done, but at least it wasn’t actually painful.  
“They’ve got a live-feed scan going over here of your brain, would you like to see it?”  
“Sure,” Newt said, his curiosity piqued. It wasn’t every day you got to look at your own brain.  
Stuart swung the monitor into Newt’s view.  
“Cool,” Newt breathed. As he watched, different areas lit up brighter or dimmed. He imagined the millions of neurons firing to form each thought. He could see the drill boring a hole in his skull; it had almost reached the dura mater.  
“Make sure he keeps talking,” Dr Quall said to Stuart. “Ask him some basic questions.”  
“Okay, what’s L’Hôpital’s rule?”  
“He’s just a child, I hardly think he’ll even know the first thing about—”  
“Given the limit of a function f of x and the limit of a function g of x are both zero or both positive or negative infinity,” Newt interrupted loudly, “if the limit of the derivative of f of x over the derivative of g of x has a positive value or is positive or negative infinity, then the limit of f of x over g of x is equal to the limit of the derivative of f of x over the derivative of g of x.”  
No one spoke for a moment. Stuart was grinning again, pleased that Newt had shocked the doctors that much, but Newt himself was feeling slightly annoyed. He was really getting tired of adults talking about him like he wasn’t there.  
Dr Quall sniffed, still refusing to acknowledge Newt, apparently deciding to ignore him completely.  
Stuart continued to ask Newt the more usual questions. Newt could no longer see the monitor, and he wondered what was going on. It seemed to be taking longer than he would have thought, but maybe they had over simplified the explanation of the procedure that they had given him. He tried to listen to what the doctors were saying, but Stuart’s questions distracted him, and the doctors spoke quickly and quietly, many times only saying a few words and simply relying on well-practised methods.  
“That’s it, sew him up,” Dr Hans finally said, and Newt could hear the other doctors complying. Dr Quall still refused to speak directly to Newt or even acknowledge him, but he was just subtle enough about it that Newt wondered if it might be his imagination. Surely he wasn’t just upset with Newt about the L’Hôpital thing? Perhaps Newt had been disrespectful in a moment of frustration, but it hadn’t been that bad, had it?  
Even though he tried to tell himself he shouldn’t care what Dr Quall thought, he couldn’t get him out of his head as his wound was closed up, bandaged, and once more swabbed with antiseptic. Although the back of his head was still numb, making his perception of nearly everything else skewed, he could still walk, so he was sent back with Stuart as the operation team prepared for the next child.  
Something about the L’Hôpital incident reminded him of his interactions with Mr. Trent, and again with the man who had first brought him to WICKED along with Dr Wells. He had supposedly been chosen in part because he was intelligent; and yet, so many adults at WICKED kept underestimating him and treating him like they expected him to be of average or even low intelligence. He couldn’t understand why so many of them seemed to despise him and the other students, as well.  
“How come you don’t hate us like the rest of them?” Newt asked as Stuart was walking him back down the corridor. “Well, most of them,” he amended, thinking of Dr Wells.  
Stuart inclined his head, thinking. After a while, he said, “If they hate you, it’s probably because they’re afraid of dying. They know that eventually, and probably sooner rather than later, they’re going to catch the Flare. It’s a terrifying idea, really, to think about slowly losing your mind, unable to do anything to stop it, until you lose everything that makes you human, and then finally you die. It’s an awful way to go. Knowing that fate awaits them, but that you all here are safe from it, is a hard thing for a lot of them. They might even think you’re flaunting your privilege. They’re jealous of you, of your potential for a future they’re excluded from.”  
Newt considered this. He could see how his outburst could have come off as arrogant if they didn’t understand why he was annoyed. He certainly never meant to act condescending to anyone because of his immunity. Although he felt as though he should feel lucky to be immune, to be exempt from the horrible death Stuart had described, mostly he just felt guilty. Guilty that he would survive when countless others, who probably had more right to live, would die. It wasn’t fair; why was everyone’s survival down to chance? You were either immune or you weren’t, there was nothing you could do about it. He thought about his mother, and he knew he would trade his immunity in a heartbeat for her to be safe from the Flare. He understood a little bit better the desperate need to believe in a cure, the willingness to do almost anything to achieve it that seemed to pervade WICKED.  
“So you’re not afraid of dying?” Newt asked, perplexed. “Why not? Isn’t everyone afraid of dying?”  
“Everyone has to die sometime,” Stuart answered amiably. “I could get hit by a bus on my way home and die today. I try to accept the possibility of death at any moment, and then dying from the Flare doesn’t seem so bad. Besides, there are things worse than death.”  
This pulled a memory from somewhere deep inside Newt, and he spoke before the memory fully surfaced.  
“ ‘To the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure,’ ” he quoted.  
“Harry Potter,” Stuart nodded in approval, flashing a grin at Newt. “I knew I liked you, kid.”  
“My mum read the first one to me for the first time when I was six years old, and ever since then I’ve read all of them over so many times I lost count.” He hadn’t thought about the Harry Potter books in a long time, but now that he had, he found that the story was inextricably linked in his mind with his parents and his life before WICKED, and he felt such an overwhelming feeling of longing and homesickness that he hastily pushed it away where he wouldn’t have to think about it. Instead, Newt kept thinking about what Stuart had said.  
“The Flare kind of seems like one of those things that’s worse than death, though,” he commented.  
“Maybe,” Stuart acceded, shrugging, “but they’re still working on a cure. And anyway, when I do catch it, I don’t think I’ll wait around to go insane. I think I’ll just end it myself.”  
Newt stared, torn between shock at the suggestion that someone would choose to end their own life and surprise that Stuart hadn’t included himself in those looking for a cure.  
Stuart glanced sideways at Newt, mildly chagrined. “I probably shouldn’t be saying things like that to someone your age,” he said, “but you’ve probably seen enough horror to know how the world works. I don’t see any point sugar coating things for you or being dishonest when you already know enough of how things are. It’s just frustrating for you and detrimental for me.”  
In a way, this was exactly why Newt was annoyed with most of WICKED, for keeping him in the dark even as it told him he was mature enough to do things like undergo brain surgery or consent to be in a human experiment.  
“Why didn’t you say ‘we’re still working on a cure,’ though?” Newt questioned. “Aren’t you part of the cure research?”  
“Oh, no, I just help teach you all lab techniques. I’m not nearly important enough to be told what’s going on.” He smiled broadly, and Newt smiled back, feeling that at last there was an adult at WICKED who was fully on his side, who knew how he felt and wouldn’t patronise him or lie to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated 2/27/18  
> I added the scene with Winston and Zart; other than that it's mostly the same except for some minor changes to make the writing less cringey (it's still pretty cringey I know).


	5. books

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Newt reads and discusses some books, and a plan is hatched.

“I really liked the sci-fi aspects of it, there were a lot of interesting ideas, but some of the social aspects were a little weird. It’s almost like he got more Mormon as he got older,” Newt was saying.  
“More Mormon?” Stuart replied, laughing. “What do you mean? And how did you even know he was Mormon?”  
“I read the intro,” replied Newt. “And I just mean, I don’t know, like for example, how in Ender in Exile there was this assumption that everyone wanted to get married and have a bunch of babies, and having a family was the only and most important end goal.”  
“Maybe it’s not so strange if, for those characters, it was. They were heavily influenced to believe that humanity’s only chance to survive was for them to spread out and colonise, and to ensure the survival of the colony they needed to have lots of babies.”  
They were discussing the series by Orson Scott Card. A few weeks previously, Stuart had held Newt back after class.  
“Was there something wrong with my assignment, sir?” Newt had asked, confused.  
“No, no, of course not, and you should know by now that you can just call me Stuart,” Stuart said, even though the students were supposed to call all teachers “sir” or “ma’am,” or “Mr-“ or “Ms-“ or “Dr so-and-so” to show respect. “I just wanted to loan you this,” he continued, handing Newt a battered paperback book. Newt read the title: Ender’s Game. “I thought you would find it a very interesting read. But be careful with it!” he added, smiling. “Not a lot of people still use physical copies of books. They’re impractical, I know—they take up so much more room than a digital library and an e-reader, and they can be damaged so easily—but for some reason I just can’t give them up. I love the tactile experience of reading them, turning the pages, even the smell of them. You don’t have to wear sterile gloves to read it, just make sure you return it in about the same condition as it is now.”  
Newt flipped through the pages, noting the signs of wear, realising this book had been read over and over, had been well-loved. “I can’t wait to start reading it,” he said.  
And he had, racing through it less than two days. He read every moment his attention wasn’t absolutely required elsewhere, blowing through his homework with only half his usual care in order to return to the book that much faster.  
He loved it. It had been a long time since he had lost himself in a book, not since leaving his parents’ house, and this book was easy to lose himself in. It resonated with him in a particular way; the children recruited at a very young age to save the world, the intelligence tests, the way they were forced to act like adults even though they were in fact still children. Above all, the manipulation of the adults, the way they used the kids, and Ender especially, put them through terrible pressure to shape them, use them as tools. And the constant question, the wondering if it was all worth it. To save the world, but lose yourself in the process.  
“I want more,” was the first thing he had said to Stuart the first time he saw him after finishing. Stuart supplied more, in the form of Speaker for the Dead, Ender’s Shadow, and Ender in Exile. Newt devoured them all, and came back to Stuart to discuss what he had read. When he had first begun to read, years and years ago, Newt had accepted everything presented to him at face value, unquestioningly. But now he found that he had opinions, and sometimes they disagreed with what he read. He actually thought about the things he read, and whether or not he thought they were true, and how they might change his own thinking. He had always loved reading, but now it was becoming a whole new experience for him. It was still an escape, but it also made him think and evaluate ideas.  
“Ok, but what about how in the beginning of Colony 1,” Newt continued, “they had a lottery to determine who got the women. That was so messed up. Because the women were just resources, like cattle, and scarce resources at that. They tried to justify it by saying there wasn’t enough time for wooing or hurt feelings or whatever, but I think that’s bogus. People should still have a choice. That whole thing was really weird to me.”  
“It seems weird to you, because of the time you grew up in, but at the time it was written, it probably wouldn’t have been as strange. Even though it’s written as though it were in the future, it’s still influenced by the time period it was actually written in.”  
“It’s still weird though,” Newt insisted. “And wrong.”  
“If I remember correctly, it was addressed by a few characters.”  
“It was addressed, sure, but no one ever objected to it. It wasn’t presented as ‘this happened but it was wrong,’ it was presented as ‘this happened and even though people weren’t 100% ok with it, they went along with it anyway because it was necessary.’ But I don’t think any circumstances make it ok to treat people like resources instead of autonomous human beings. And that’s another thing, they kept acting like scientists would think this way because they’re so logical and evolved and know about brain chemistry and all these other reasons, but I know a lot about science and I don’t agree with their viewpoints at all.” He knew he was being argumentative, but he couldn’t help it. He had to make sure Stuart understood exactly what he had found so disturbing about that aspect of the book.  
Rather than being angry, however, Stuart was laughing. “Careful,” he teased, “don’t let the other teachers catch you talking like that. That was very nearly an anti-WICKED statement.”  
Newt was surprised. He hadn’t intended it to be, but now that he thought about it, it made sense. WICKED was using them, him, as a resource, and getting away with it because of the dire circumstances of the world.  
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I just liked Ender’s Game better than any of the ones after it. Although Ender’s Shadow was still pretty good. I liked Bean. Although I have a feeling he’s going to ruin Bean in the next one, Shadow of the Hegemon or whichever one, because of some things that were mentioned in Ender in Exile. It’s annoying because I really like the story and some of the ideas but I have a hard time getting over his, his, I don’t know, his Mormon-ness.” Stuart was still smirking, so Newt decided to just go for broke. “Also he turned Ender into kind of a snob. All that crap about ‘they’re smart, but not Battle School smart.’ As though battle school smart is the only kind of smart worth being.”  
“I did tell you it would be interesting, didn’t I?” Stuart said. “And I think on the whole I agree with your assessment, although I’m not quite as critical, I’m afraid. It’s very hard to separate a piece of writing from the time period in which it was written, and though all the Ender books hold up very well for being written so long ago, they are always going to be somewhat coloured by the prejudices of the time. That doesn’t mean they’re not worth reading.”  
Newt disagreed, but he could see that he wouldn’t change Stuart’s mind, so he decided to let it go. He and Stuart didn’t have to agree on everything.  
“Would it be ok if I lend some of these to my friends?” Newt asked, holding up Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow. “I think they might enjoy them too.”  
“Sure,” Stuart replied. “Take as many as you like, for as long as you like. Just make sure you keep taking care of them.”

He lent Ender’s Game to Minho. Minho finished the book even faster than he had and seemed excited to talk about it with Newt.  
“It was really interesting how many things he got right,” Minho said over lunch the day he finished the book. “Like the desks, even though we don’t call them that. And I guess the threat of world annihilation is from a virus and not aliens,” he continued. “But the whole IF and the Battle School program is a lot like this, except for the fact that WICKED sucks and they don’t actually tell us anything. But even that had some parallels, because the IF manipulated Ender and lied to him to use him.”  
“Yes! Exactly!” cried Newt. “Didn’t you feel like in a way you were reading about us? I mean, not exactly us, but there are so many similarities—they take smart young kids and train them and isolate them from everyone else, but they’re always watching them and they never give them all the information, the have to find out through tricks ad outsmarting the teachers.”  
“So do you think they’re watching us all the time?”  
“Of course they are, there are cameras everywhere and they’re supposed to be studying us anyway to find out why we’re immune.” Newt thought a little more. “If only we knew exactly how they were studying us.”  
“Maybe we should try some tricking and outsmarting of our own,” suggested Minho, his look calculating.  
“Like what?” Newt asked, feeling eager.  
Minho lowered his voice. “Remember how we overheard Thomas and Teresa saying something about a maze, something to do with whatever it is WICKED is up to?”  
Newt grinned. “What are you thinking?”  
“What if we break into the computer lab where they’re always doing their super-secret work and see if we can figure out what the maze is?” Minho’s look held a challenge. Maybe he didn’t think Newt would be up for that much rule-breaking.  
“Ok,” Newt agreed immediately, “but we should get Alby to help us.”  
“That guy? Why?” asked Minho. “We don’t need him. And what makes you think he’d even want to?”  
“He’s my friend,” Newt said, “and anyway I think it’ll be better with three people than two, we’ll have somebody else to watch our backs. And I think he’ll want to find out what they’ve been lying about too. And besides, I think we really need him. He’s older than us, and he’s been here longer than both of us, so he knows the place better.”  
Minho rolled his eyes slightly. “Fine. But you get to do the convincing.”  
“Deal,” said Newt happily.

 

“So what did you want to talk about?” Alby asked suspiciously. Newt noticed his eyes taking in the music player and the camera whose blind spot Newt had oh-so-casually led him to. These precautions were probably unnecessary, but Newt didn’t want any careless mistakes to allow them to get caught.  
“I just wanted to have you listen to this music. It’s really good.” Newt tried to use as normal a voice as possible, just in case anyone was listening, but his voice sounded false to his own ears, too loud and self-conscious. Hopefully his extra awareness was making him hypercritical. Newt turned on the music player and turned the volume up to what he hoped was a just-below-suspicious level.  
Newt swallowed, thinking about how best to phrase their preposterous scheme so that Alby might accept it. “I know you’re tired of WICKED lying to us all the time, and we’re tired of it too,” he began, indicating himself and Minho. “But more than that, we’re sick of just sitting around and doing whatever they tell us. I’m—we’re—sick of reacting to things that they do or they make happen—we want to make some things happen for a change. We want be the ones doing.” He paused, and Alby waited for him to continue. Alby’s expression was guarded; he considered Newt calmly, but behind his placid eyes Newt sensed his careful judgement. Newt glanced at Minho for help. As agreed, Minho said nothing, but his gaze was intense, and he nodded for Newt to continue.  
Newt took a deep breath and said, “We want to break into the lab and look at their records to see what they’re really getting up to.”  
As he had feared, Alby needed more convincing than he himself had.  
“There’s no way we can do that without getting caught,” was his first objection.  
“I think we can,” argued Newt, “if we plan it carefully and think everything through. We’re smart,” he insisted stubbornly, seeing Alby about to interject, “and I think if we’re careful and plan for everything, we can do it.”  
“We can’t plan for everything,” Alby said.  
“I don’t think we actually have to plan for everything,” put in Minho, finally deciding to speak. Newt looked at him gratefully. “They’re not really expecting us to do anything like this, so they won’t see it coming. As long as we have a good plan and cover our tracks, I think it’s definitely possible.” His eyes were bright but unfocused, already scheming. He looked possibly more excited than Newt had ever seen him.  
“C’mon, Alby,” Newt let the excitement of resistance infect him, “I know you want to do something too. It will work better with three people. Aren’t you tired of always doing what they tell you?”  
“Yeah! It might even be fun,” Minho chimed in. “It’s at least the least boring thing we’ll have done since we came here, although that’s not saying much.”  
Newt watched Alby’s face closely as he considered, rubbing his temple with his fingers.  
“I don’t know, you guys,” Alby said after a few moments. “We’re just kids. We’re not even teenagers yet, how can we outsmart all these adults?”  
“We’re not just kids,” Newt countered, “we’re highly intelligent kids. We’re more creative and more bored than they give us credit for.” Alby gave a small smile, which encouraged Newt enough to go on. “They brought us here for a reason, but now even though they know how smart we are, they insist on underestimating us. They don’t even think enough of us to tell us the truth about what they’re studying.” Newt told Alby about what he and Minho had overheard, about the mysterious plan called the maze. “Aren’t you tired of them lying to us? Don’t you want to know what’s going on?” he finished.   
Alby thought for a long time before answering, but Newt didn’t say anything more. He was afraid too much cajoling would only make Alby angry, so he said nothing else as he waited for Alby’s verdict.  
Finally Alby smiled. “Alright,” he agreed, resigned, “what’s the plan?”  
A slow smile spread across Newt’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't updated in so long! Life can get crazy. The good news is I have about four more chapters I can post right away, and I have a lot of pieces of the full story that I just need to figure out how to connect. So if you're following this work, I update pretty sporadically, but at least this time there is a lot to update. I hope you like it.
> 
> Updated 2/27/18  
> Minor changes only.  
> I want to explain why this chapter exists. I really liked the idea of these characters reacting to certain books and music and movies (this kind of thing happens again later on too), and since this story is theoretically set in our own not-too-distant future, it's entirely within the realm of possibility for them to come across these things and experience them (although they might be considered pretty old). Especially Ender's Game, I really liked the idea of these characters reading it and reacting to it. I think it would have really resonated with them in their situation.  
> However.  
> I've always had a few issues with Orson Scott Card, mainly due to sexism. (Don't even get me started on that woman lottery situation mentioned in this chapter, I can rant about it for hours. What Newt says about it is an EXTREMELY brief version of that rant.) But I recently found out (even though apparently it's been a thing for a really really long time) that he's apparently also a raging homophobe and possibly racist. So obviously that's Not Okay and I feel a little torn about still discussing his books here.  
> But we've had our own issues in this fandom recently, finding out that JD is actually not a good person, and I know some people have felt similarly torn about continuing to read and enjoy his books. Most of us have come to the conclusion that, while we don't want to continue to give him our money or support, we're still ok with enjoying the books and characters he created, because they belong to us now, and they mean so much to us that we don't want to let his actions ruin something that's done us a lot of good. I think the same argument can be made for Ender, and even though I think OSC is utter trash, I still really like the characters and the world he created, and I still want to imagine Newt reading about Ender and it bringing him some comfort.


	6. schemes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Newt, Alby and Minho put their schemes into action and find out some disturbing information.

Over the next few weeks the boys spent all their free time in some corner or other, out of sight of the cameras, heads bent together. They discussed every aspect over and over, examined every angle they could think of, planned every detail.  
“Alright, I think we’re finally ready,” said Alby one day, after discussing the plan ad nauseum. “I think we should do it tonight.”  
“Tonight?” echoed Newt, startled. “Why tonight?”  
“We have everything planned out. We have everything we need, except the id badge, which you guys can get tonight. Everything’s ready. If we wait any longer we’ll probably just psych ourselves out.”  
“Don’t tell me you’re going to chicken out now,” Minho said. “This was partially your idea, remember?”  
“I know, I just… okay. Tonight. Yes. Let’s do it.” Newt set his mouth in grim determination. It was hard to believe that after all the endless planning and strategizing, it was finally going to happen.  
“You have the fingerprint ready, right?” Alby asked, and Minho nodded. “So tonight when everyone’s asleep, you just need to steal his badge and then come get me when you’re ready. I’ll be waiting in my dorm.”  
“We know the plan, Alby,” Minho said with a roll of his eyes. “We’ve only gone over it about a thousand times.”  
“Alright, just make sure you do everything right,” Alby responded, shaking his head slightly. “I don’t even want to think about what will happen if we get caught.”  
“We’re not going to get caught,” Newt said with more confidence than he felt. “The plan is good, it’ll work.” He exchanged glances with both the other boys. They were as ready as they would ever be.

Later that night when the snores of all the other boys in the 10-year-olds’ dorm proclaimed them to be fast asleep, Newt and Minho crept out of bed and stole across the room to the door that lead to the locker room. Across from where they entered was the door leading to the nine-year-old boy’s dorm, and in between stood a row of lockers. Ever since the brain biopsies, Thomas and Teresa had been integrated into the other kids’ lives, and were no longer kept strictly separate, although they still spent most of each day sequestered in the top-secret lab. Thomas now slept in a bunk with all the other 9-year-olds, and had a locker in the adjoining locker room.  
First they opened Minho’s locker, carefully taking out an incredibly thin, delicate, rubbery piece of material that they had painstakingly crafted from materials stolen surreptitiously from the science lab during lessons. It was slightly curved, and the convex side bore a thumbprint. Thomas, it turned out, was a sufficiently heavy sleeper that he did not notice when they snuck over to his bunk one night and took a mould of his thumb. They needed the thumbprint of someone with access to the lab, and they had decided on Thomas because they had the easiest access to stealing his print and id badge.  
The boys closed Minho’s locker and then tiptoed over to Thomas’ locker.  
“You sure you know the combination?” Minho whispered.  
“I’ve watched him open it the last three days,” Newt replied slowly, his eyes fixed on the round dial of the combination lock. “I’m sure.” Carefully he turned it to the right up to the 2, to the left all the way around once and then to 36, and to the right again to the 10. He pushed up on the catch and the locker swung open smoothly. Newt turned to Minho and grinned. He could just make out Minho’s grin back at him through the near-complete darkness.  
In the locker were piles of neatly folded clothes, stacked textbooks, a few crumpled pieces of paper and some battered-looking folders, and there, hanging from a hook in the back, an id badge on a lanyard. Minho grabbed it and they closed the locker as quietly as possible.  
The next part would be tricky. Climbing onto a bench and then using the top of the row of lockers, Minho reached up to the ceiling and carefully pushed one of the ceiling tiles up and slid it over to make an entrance, then hoisted himself up into the ceiling. Newt knew Minho was making as little noise as possible, but he winced at every scuffle and the soft clang of Minho’s shoes on the lockers, meanwhile hoping the ceiling wouldn’t give way and send Minho crashing to the ground.  
Luck was with them; the ceiling held, and no one came to investigate the noises. Newt climbed up onto the bench after Minho, and Minho leaned down from the ceiling to help pull him up. Once Newt had struggled his way into the ceiling, he replaced the ceiling tile, and they clicked on the tiny flashlights they had stolen from a maintenance closet and began to worm their way in the direction of the 11-year-old boy’s dorm, Minho counting tiles as they went.  
When he reached fifteen, they stopped and silently pried the tile up, flashlights clenched in their teeth. They clicked the flashlights off again so as not to wake anyone, and cautiously they peered down into the room, blinking as their night-vision slowly returned. They were relieved to make out Alby waiting below them. They each reached down a hand to grasp one of Alby’s, and hauled him fairly easily up into the ceiling. Newt replaced the ceiling tile, and then they crawled on, Minho again counting tiles.  
Inside the ceiling was dirty and cramped, different ducts and vents leading off to various parts of the WICKED compound, and as Newt pushed himself forward painfully slowly on his knees and elbows, he was plagued by the constant fear that one or all of them would fall through. He was relieved when Minho announced they had reached the fifty-second tile, their destination. Minho and Alby pried up the tile, and first Minho, then Alby dropped down to the floor. When it was Newt’s turn, he lowered himself slowly, arms shaking from the strain, onto the other two boys’ shoulders, and they supported him long enough to pull the ceiling tile back into place before he too jumped down to the floor. Hopefully, they had left no sign of their traverse through the ceiling, and no one would ever know they had been there.  
They had arrived in the surveillance room, where the signals from all the security cameras all over the WICKED compound were sent and the video surveillance recorded. As Newt looked around, he saw screens showing the video feed from hundreds of rooms and hallways, nearly all empty of people since it was the dead of night. Luckily there were no cameras in the dorms, so their activity had gone undocumented. They just needed to make sure it stayed that way.  
Alby made his way over to the server where all the video was recorded. They had discussed making a video loop showing the empty hallways to the lab and the lab itself, but as they lacked the know-how and equipment for such a feat, they had decided on the less elegant but simpler method of just shutting it off. Alby knelt down and gently worked the server’s plug out of the wall, stopping just after the server suddenly powered off, leaving the tip of the plug just hanging from the outlet on the wall, but not plugged in enough to provide power to the server. The cameras were all still capturing video and sending the signals, and if anyone came to the surveillance room while they were out, they would be clearly visible on the monitors, but without the server to save the video, no one would be able to look up that night’s surveillance. The room was usually unmanned at night, and their hope was that when the partially unplugged server was discovered in the morning, it would be blamed on an accidental bump to the power cord.  
They left the surveillance room, through the door now that they no longer had to worry about the cameras, and made their way stealthily to the lab. Once at the entrance, Minho took out the false fingerprint and with a bit of saliva, adhered it to Newt’s left thumb. Then Minho swiped the id badge as Newt held his thumb to the fingerprint scanner. Newt held his breath nervously, but the lab door slid open immediately. Newt thought he could hear the other two boys release their breath in relief too as they hurried inside.  
Newt flipped the light on, and they spread out and began to wake up computers. They had been afraid the computers might require a log-in password, but luckily since access to the lab itself was restricted, the computers themselves had no additional security.  
Now that they were actually here, in the lab, under the bright washed-out light of the fluorescent bulbs, Newt could feel his pace quicken and his mouth go a little drier. Somehow it had all seemed like a game up until this point, but here it became real, and the fact that they could be caught at any moment hammered itself into Newt’s head. He kept up a constant internal monologue, please don’t let us get caught, please don’t let us get caught, although he wasn’t sure to whom he was appealing.  
When the computer he was at woke up, Newt started opening files, scanning for anything that seemed related to the maze they had heard about so briefly. There were a lot of files, and Newt thought despairingly that they could be here all night and not find anything of importance. They had agreed to only stay two hours at the very latest, so that they had plenty of time to get back to their dorms without being seen before anyone got up for the morning.  
Newt opened a few files at random. They all seemed to be information about various of the children at WICKED: test scores, personality profiles, even some MRIs. Newt recognised the names of some of his classmates and a few of the younger children. He pulled a junk drive out of his pocket, plugged it into the computer, and copied some of the files over. He could read them in detail later to see if they were anything important.  
“Woah. Look at this,” Alby said suddenly.  
“What is it?” asked Newt, pulling the junk drive out of the computer and stowing it in his pocket as he hurried over. “Did you find something about the maze?”  
“No, at least I don’t think so. But look, they have all kinds of data on all of us. Everyone’s names are on here.”  
“I saw some of that too,” Newt said, disappointed. Minho came over as well, and they both looked at the file Alby had pulled up.  
“No, it’s different from the other stuff. That was just test scores and other old stuff. This is more recent, and it’s…” Alby trailed off, processing what he was seeing. “Look,” he pointed to the date stamp, “this was last updated yesterday. And the data they’re tracking… it’s all dopamine levels and serotonin levels and which subnuclei of neurons are going off at any given time. How would they even get this information? Unless…” Alby suddenly looked stricken. He minimised the file and started hunting through the programs on the computer.  
“Unless what? What is it?” Newt demanded impatiently. “What are you looking for?”  
“They must have some way of getting this data, some way of looking into our brains. But the only time we know of that they actually looked at our brains was when…”  
“When they did the surgery,” Newt finished for him, beginning to understand. “But if all they did was a biopsy…”  
“Then how do they have all the recent data,” Alby confirmed his thought grimly. “Here,” he said suddenly, opening up a program titled ‘Baseline,’ “this one is massive, maybe it’s the one.”  
After a few moments the program opened, and several 3-dimensional representations of human brains covered the screen, the flickering lights indicating activity. Each one was carefully labelled with a subject number. At the top of the screen, there was a list that referenced subject numbers to names. Every single boy and girl WICKED had collected over the years was listed. All of their brains were here, being constantly measured, scanned, analysed, processed.  
Alby scrolled through the display. “Look, here’s how they’re doing it,” he zoomed into one of the 3-D brain pictures and pointed to a smooth, grey object located just inside the base of the skull, perched above the brain stem. “Some of the graphs said something about nanobots located in different regions of the brain—they must have injected our brains with a bunch of nanobots, and they all send signals to this object here, which synthesizes all the different signals into the scans, and then sends them to the computer to be recorded.”  
Despite his growing horror, Newt couldn’t help but be impressed. “Cool,” he whispered, looking closer at some of the brain graphs. “Which one’s mine?”  
Alby scrolled back up to the chart listing subject names. “You’re subject A2-05.” They found the picture of Newt’s brain. Newt felt horribly invaded and uncontainable excitement at the same time. He was looking at a 3-dimensional picture of his own brain. Every thought he had, every subconscious monitoring of his body, appeared there on the scan, in the form of a tiny flicker of light, an explosion of neuron activity.  
“Minho, come look at this,” he called back.  
“No.”  
“What?” The abruptness of Minho’s reply pulled Newt from his reverie, and he turned to look at Minho over his shoulder. He was surprised to see Minho hunched over, holding his head in his hands and rocking back and forth slightly on his heels. He looked nothing like the self-assured Minho Newt was used to.  
“No, I’m not going to go look at your ‘cool’ brain scans,” Minho said angrily. “I’m not going to think any more than I have to about the fact that there are tiny things in my head reading all my thoughts.”  
“Minho—” Newt began cautiously.  
“You said they were just biopsies!” Minho rushed on, his voice rising, bordering on hysteria. “You didn’t say they were putting something inside me! Inside my head! We don’t even know what it does, maybe it can do even more. Maybe they can control us, even kill us! You don’t know what they’ve done to us!”  
“Minho, I’m sorry, I didn’t know!” Newt exclaimed. They were being much too loud, someone would hear, someone would come. “Minho, I know you’re upset, but we have to be quiet—”  
“I have to get it out,” Minho said, as if he hadn’t even heard Newt. “I have to get it out of my head, right now, right now, I can’t—” he was clawing at his head as though he wanted to rip the device out with his bare hands.  
“Newt, look at this. This isn’t good.” Newt turned and saw the brain Alby was indicating on the screen. It said ‘Subject A2-07’ but it had to be Minho because it was lighting up in a frenzy of activity. Newt was watching his friend’s brain as he went through a panic attack.  
“We have to get out of here before somebody hears us,” Alby said, and Newt silently agreed. “For all we know, this kind of brain activity could set off an alarm to alert the researchers. You calm him down, I’ll shut off all the computers and then we need to get the hell out of here and back to our dorms.”  
Newt crossed the short space to Minho and grabbed his hands, holding them tight so he couldn’t hurt himself.  
“Minho,” he said, quietly but urgently, “I’m sorry I convinced you to let them do the surgery. I didn’t know, ok? I thought it was just a biopsy. Look at me, Minho.” Minho’s eyes were wild, but they found Newt’s and locked on. Newt tried to communicate as much truth as he could into his next words. “I promise we’ll figure out a way to get it out of your head. Do you hear me? I promise. It may not be today, or tomorrow, or even soon, but we’ll figure out a way. Ok?”  
“You promise?” whispered Minho, his eyes still searching Newt’s. He looked dangerous and wild, like an animal backed into a corner, but Newt thought he could also see a spark of hope, something to cling to in the raging storm.  
“I promise,” Newt repeated solemnly, not once looking away from Minho. He had no idea how to keep his promise, but he refused to fail his friend. He would figure out a way.  
“Ok,” Minho said, finally tearing his eyes away from Newt’s and looking down. “Ok,” he repeated.  
“Just keep breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth.” Newt had read that somewhere, that it was the best way to control your breathing. He hoped it would work. “Not too fast, stay in time with me.” Slowly he breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, and Minho copied him. He wasn’t clawing at his head anymore, but he still looked frightened. Newt wasn’t used to seeing him look this scared, wasn’t used to Minho displaying much of any emotion at all besides disdain.  
“I just can’t stop thinking,” Minho muttered to him, “about all those little… things… in my head… I can’t…”  
“Well, let’s try to think about something else instead,” Newt jumped in quickly. “Umm,” he hemmed as he tried to think of something to occupy Minho’s mind that had nothing to do with brains or nanobots or mind-reading. “What about maths?” he threw out hopefully. “What’s, umm, 17 times 37?”  
“629,” Minho said, after only a short pause. “Something harder.”  
“Ok, what’s the square root of 12 to three decimal places?”  
“It’s three point… three point five squared would be twelve point two five so it must be three point four something… three point four six squared is… not quite twelve but really close… so it must be three point four six something…” he spoke out loud to himself rapidly, working it out.  
By now Alby had powered down the computers and put everything back as it was before they had arrived. They wanted to leave no trace that they had ever been there.  
“3.464!” Minho exclaimed, just as Alby signalled Newt it was time to go.  
“Ok, how far can you take 2 to the nth power?” Newt asked as he turned off the lights and ushered Minho to the lab door.  
“2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048…” Minho began counting. They exited the lab and crept down the dark hallways, Minho still whisper-counting. “16,384; 32,768.” So far no one seemed to be aware of the break-in. There was no one in the hallways; perhaps everyone was still asleep and they had left the lab, and the answers to all their questions, for nothing.  
They were almost back to their dorms when Newt heard it: soft footsteps and voices at the end of the hallway. It sounded like they were just around the corner. Newt froze, grabbing Minho’s hand tightly. He must have squeezed too tight, because Minho wrenched his hand from Newt’s grasp, but he fell silent. Alby took a few slow, silent steps forward, then turned and beckoned to Newt. Newt could barely see his face in the dim light, but the meaning in his eyes was clear: they had to get back to their dorms, into their beds, before anyone discovered they were gone.  
Newt felt paralysed by fear, but he forced himself to take a few steps forward, following Alby. What if they had already checked their beds and discovered they were gone? What would WICKED do to them if they knew they had been snooping in the top-secret lab?  
He felt two sharp jabs as Minho poked him in the back, not daring to say anything out loud but urging him on. As quickly as he could whilst remaining silent, Newt walked forward. They were just a few feet from the door to their dorm rooms, but the voices sounded like they could come around the corner any moment. Newt felt trapped, like prey about to be discovered hiding in a bush.  
Ahead of him, Alby had reached the door to his dorm. He eased the door open just far enough to squeeze through, then turned and flashed Newt a thumbs up before vanishing and closing the door softly behind him.  
Now Newt was at the door to his and Minho’s dorm room. Alby had made it, apparently without any problems. There probably wasn’t anyone lying in wait behind the door, and they would definitely be discovered if they stayed out in the hallway. Newt opened the door and slipped through, letting Minho follow him and close the door silently.  
They were back. They had made it. Newt all but ran back to his bunk, hoping none of the other boys had woken up and realised they were gone or noticed when they came back in. He tried to slow the hammering of his heart and think about if there was anything they had forgotten, any trace they had left behind on accident. Newt felt the junk drive in his pocket. Later, he would read the contents of those files he had copied in detail.  
Suddenly Newt noticed Minho at the bunk directly across from him. Instead of laying down and pretending to be asleep, Minho was hunched over the bed, breathing heavily.  
Newt got up and went over to him. “Minho?” he whispered as softly as he could. “Are you ok?”  
Minho nodded, but kept breathing heavily. Newt noticed he was keeping the ‘in through the nose, out through the mouth’ pattern, as though he were trying to get it under control but failing.  
“Not too fast,” Newt told him. “Breath with me.” Newt kept a slow, even pace, allowing his lungs to become as full as possible and then holding the air for a few seconds before exhaling just as slowly. Gradually Minho matched his pace, and seemed calmer.  
Just when Newt thought they might be in the clear, the door flew open and light flooded the room. Newt turned, blinking, to see who had come in. It was a group of teachers and researchers. Newt didn’t recognise any of them.  
“What’s going on here? Why are you out of bed?” One of them demanded in a too-loud voice.  
Newt’s thoughts raced. The brain scans—whatever story he came up with, it had to be able to sufficiently explain their brain activity, especially Minho’s, in case that was what had alerted them in the first place. What could he say? Suddenly he hit on it:  
“He’s had a nightmare, sir,” Newt said as respectfully as possible. “He was yelling and thrashing in his sleep, so I woke him up to try and calm him down.” Newt looked the man who had spoken directly in the eye. Would they buy it? Surely they could tell the difference between sleeping and waking brain waves, and they would know the two of them had been awake much longer than he was admitting. Still, even if they knew, they wouldn’t be able to call him on his lie without admitting how closely their brains were being monitored.  
He eyed the man, and the man eyed him in return. Newt tried to look innocent. I’m just a little 10-year-old boy, he tried to make his face say. Would I lie to you?  
Finally the man seemed satisfied, and turned to Minho. “Are you all right? There’s nothing to be afraid of here.”  
Only Newt could have noticed the unusual way Minho clenched his muscles before turning to face the man, and once he had turned, his face was schooled into the perfect combination of weary, embarrassed, and grateful.  
“Yeah, I’m all better now,” he said, not a twinge of sarcasm detectable. “Thanks for coming to check on me. I’m sorry if I made you all get out of bed at this hour.” Newt marvelled at his acting abilities.  
“Well as long as everything’s ok,” the man said, apparently not suspecting a thing. He looked relieved. “You boys should get back to bed. You’ll have to get up for school in just a few hours.”  
“Yes, sir,” Newt and Minho chorused together. Newt returned to his bunk, and the group of adults left, turning out the light.  
Only when they had been gone for several moments did Newt actually feel himself relax. They had made it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've debated a lot in my head back and forth about whether my characterization of the three main characters is correct. What are your thoughts?
> 
> Updated 2/27/18  
> Minor changes only.


	7. lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Newt becomes aware of more of WICKED's lies.

The next day, during free time, Newt found a relatively secluded computer terminal and casually turned the monitor just enough so that it didn’t face the security camera. Before he plugged the junk drive in and looked at the files, however, Minho joined him.  
“Hey,” Newt said in greeting. “Are you feeling better? From last night?” The question was innocuous enough; probably Newt was being paranoid, but anyone listening in would assume he was talking about Minho’s supposed nightmare.  
“Yeah, I guess,” Minho answered. His shoulders were slightly slumped, and he kept glancing up at Newt, then returning to studying his shoes, which he was scuffing against the faded carpet. He looked embarrassed, Newt realised.  
Minho leaned over Newt and queued up some music to play on the computer from the digital library all the computers had access to. Heavy rock music blared from the speakers, and Newt understood that they could talk freely about the night before without fear of being overheard.  
“Sorry for freaking out on you last night.” Minho couldn’t even look him in the face, and something inside Newt’s chest pinched. “I don’t know what happened, it was like I just couldn’t deal with—I didn’t want them messing around in my brain in the first place, and then to find out all of a sudden like that, that they lied to us and actually put something in us—” he broke off, taking a ragged breath, calming himself. “Anyway, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”  
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Newt said firmly. Minho looked up at him sharply, then back to the floor. “No, I mean it,” Newt told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault.”  
“I should’ve had better control of myself,” Minho began, but Newt cut him off.  
“No. You did great. It wasn’t your fault. They lied to you, to all of us, and manipulated us.”  
“Yeah, but you and Alby didn’t lose control like that,” Minho muttered.  
“Alby and I aren’t as affected by people messing in our brains as you are. But there’s something else that’ll bug the shit out of me that won’t affect you, depend on it. It doesn’t mean one of us is weaker or stronger than the other.”  
Minho finally cracked a smile. “How did you get so wise?”  
Newt smiled and replied, “From my mother, of course,” before he remembered how far away she was and how he hadn’t seen her in over a year, and the smile left his face. He turned away from Minho and plugged the junk drive into the computer, eager to change the subject. “So anyway, are you ready to check out these files? Or maybe I should just read them by myself and tell you later what they say, without any of the brain stuff.”  
“It’s ok, I’m more prepared for it this time. I think I can handle it without freaking out.”  
Fortunately, the files Newt had taken were more about the raw data on each individual student, so there wasn’t much that could trigger Minho’s meltdown, but unfortunately, most of it meant little to nothing to Newt without context. It did confirm their discovery of last night, that their brains were being observed much more closely than they had realised, but apart from that, they only learned one important thing from the files:  
“What do you think that means, ‘terminated’?” Newt asked, frowning. He was skimming the data for one of the 7-year-old girls, Helen.  
“Let me see,” Minho pushed Newt chair slightly to the side to get a better look at the screen. His eyes scanned the page, and he squinted in confusion as he noticed something. “Look, there’s only the preliminary data. There’s all her test scores and everything, the stuff they did before the implants, and then only data for a few days after the implants, and then it just says ‘terminated’.”  
Newt leaned back and rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Did she leave? Go back home? But surely we would have heard about someone leaving.” He frowned.  
“Oh shit,” Minho said suddenly, sitting straight up. “Oh fuck, no. Please no.”  
“What?” Newt said apprehensively. Please don’t start panicking again.  
“Newt,” Minho said slowly, unwilling to put his thought to words, “what if she… what if she died?”  
“Shit,” Newt swore, drawing out the word. It didn’t make him feel any better. “She was only seven years old.” Suddenly his throat burned and he felt a lump rising, making it hard to swallow. Tears gathered in his eyes and his vision swam.  
Minho glanced sideways at him. “Listen, we don’t know for sure that’s what happened. Maybe the device broke and they couldn’t get any more data. Maybe she did go home, and they kept it hushed up because they didn’t want us all to leave.” Newt nodded, but he knew in his heart they were grasping at straws. He had known as soon as he saw the word ‘terminated’, he just hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself.  
“We have to find out for sure,” he told Minho. “Let’s go talk to the other 7-year-olds. Maybe they saw something.”

* * *

There were only a few 7-year-olds; most of the children who had been brought to WICKED were older. One of them, a boy named Chuck, had been friends with Helen.  
“I was staying with her after the surgery, because she was scared. She kept saying she felt wrong, and she thought they had messed up and took too big a piece of her brain,” Chuck explained. Newt and Minho exchanged a meaningful glance. “We had the rest of the day off, so I didn’t have to go to any classes, and I stayed with her the rest of the day. But after a few hours she seemed really sick. I couldn’t take her temperature, but she felt really hot. I think she had a fever. And she was seeing things and talking to people that weren’t there. So I went to get help and they took her to the infirmary. That was weeks and weeks ago,” Chuck said plaintively, “and I haven’t seen her since. I tried to go visit her in the infirmary but they wouldn’t let me in. They said she needed to rest.” A few tears leaked out of Chuck’s eyes and trailed down his chubby 7-year-old cheeks. “I told some of the other kids but they didn’t believe me. They didn’t even remember that she was here, they thought I made her up. I think something bad happened to her, because of the surgery.”  
“We believe you, Chuckie. Don’t worry,” Newt tried to comfort him, but it felt like lying. How could they tell him they thought Helen was dead? Newt fought to keep his own emotions under control. He had to stay strong for Chuck.  
“She was so worried, it was like she knew something bad would happen. And then something did happen, and I couldn’t help her at all.”  
“It’s not your fault, Chuck. There was nothing you could do,” Newt assured him, but inside he was seething. Who were these monsters, who could kill children without batting an eye, and allow another child to think he was imagining things just to keep their insidious secret? For that matter, how many others had died?  
A memory jogged in Newt’s mind. Suddenly feeling cold all over, Newt turned to Minho.  
“Hey, Minho,” he said, trying to sound casual for Chuck’s sake, “do you remember Neil?”  
“That loner kid from the class under us? Yeah, but what’s that got to do with…” Minho trailed off, realising where this was heading.  
“I haven’t seen him in a while, have you?” Newt asked, still carefully keeping his voice calm. Chuck was following the exchange, his face turning from one to the other as they spoke.  
“Not since the day after the surgery,” Minho confirmed, avoiding eye contact with Chuck.  
The memory had completely escaped Newt’s mind until this moment. They had only been told that Neil had fallen ill, too ill to leave the infirmary or have any visitors. Newt realised now that it had all been a charade to avoid suspicion; he recalled never actually seeing Neil in the infirmary.  
Newt felt sick. How had he not realised? How had he not missed Neil, noticed he was missing an unusually long period of time? Neil hadn’t had many friends to begin with, but the fact that no one had noticed his mysterious disappearance made Newt burn inside with shame.  
“We’ll try and figure out what happened, and if we learn anything new we’ll come tell you,” he told Chuck, then he and Minho hurried back to the computer. He had to find out how many more of the children had died because of WICKED’s actions.  
With growing horror, Newt counted four more subjects ‘terminated’, bringing the total up to six, including Helen and Neil, but he only had data on about half the students. There was no telling how many more deaths there had been.  
Newt vowed right then to find out. He had been too late to save them, but he would make sure they were not forgotten. He wouldn’t let them fade into footnotes on WICKED’s final report.  
His eyes bleary with unshed tears, Newt turned to Minho next to him. “You’re being remarkably calm about all this,” he said in a voice that itself sounded unnaturally calm.  
“I’m experimenting with dissociation. I’m pretending it’s all happening to someone else,” Minho replied, looking carefully at Newt. “But how are you doing? You don’t look too good, to be honest.”  
“I feel like I should have done something. I should have asked more questions before agreeing, I should have refused to let them do this to us; I should have done something. Not just stood back and let it happen.” The lump was back in his throat, and Newt tilted his face up ever so slightly, hoping to keep the tears from spilling over. He cried much more easily than Minho, whom he had never seen shed a tear.  
“It’s not your fault,” Minho said at once. Newt thought how recently he had said the same thing to Minho, and now their positions were reversed. Newt was breaking down, and Minho was being the calm one. “It’s like you said, they probably wouldn’t really have given us a choice. We couldn’t have stopped anything, and we would have just made trouble for ourselves.” Minho looked carefully at him, evaluating him. “You can’t save everyone, you know.”  
“I can’t save anyone!” Newt said in anguish. “I’m completely useless.” Then the tears were coming and he couldn’t stop them, Minho was going to see him cry. Unbidden his thoughts went to his father, but he pushed the memory away. If he went down that path, he might never stop crying.  
“You’re beating yourself up too much about something way out of your control,” Minho said. “I know it seems harsh, but they’re already dead. They’re gone and you can’t help them anymore. The best thing for you to do is watch out for yourself and make sure you don’t follow them.”  
Newt looked up at Minho. It seemed a horribly cold thing to say, but in a way it did make sense.  
“That’s better,” Minho looked relieved that Newt had stopped crying. “And I’m not saying to never help anyone ever. Survival is almost always better in groups. So you help the group, as long as it helps you. But when someone is past help, it doesn’t do you any good to waste any more energy on them. It only makes you more likely to bite it yourself.” Minho rambled on, and Newt got the feeling he was saying much more than he meant to. What he said made a lot of sense, as cold as it sounded, but Newt couldn’t feel the same. He still wanted to help anyone he could, even if it risked his own well-being.  
But Minho was right. The past was in the past, and he couldn’t help those kids anymore. The most he could do was remember them, and one day, if it was possible, make WICKED pay for what they had done.  
Then he remembered what was at stake, and the Flare virus, and he paused. He still hated WICKED, but maybe what they were doing was justified. But surely there was a better way! No matter which path, there were too many dead, too much suffering.  
“I can’t believe they would do all this without our informed consent,” Newt said.  
“Really?” Minho replied. “Because I can believe it just fine. It’s too in-character for me to not believe that WICKED would lie to us.”  
“I mean, I guess it fits with everything they’ve done so far,” Newt amended, “I just can’t believe they’re getting away with it. Isn’t anyone holding them accountable? Isn’t anyone checking up on them?”  
“I think the groups who would normally do that were all shot to hell when the Flare happened in the first place,” said Minho. “There’s no one left to check up on WICKED. They have all the resources, and they can do whatever they want.”  
By now free time was almost over, and they slowly walked back to their dorm room to get their things for afternoon lessons.  
As he was retrieving his books from his locker, something caught his eye: it was the stack of Ender books Stuart had lent him. Stuart. Who had been standing right there throughout Newt’s entire operation, who could not have failed to notice the doctors putting things in Newt’s brain. And who had looked Newt directly in the eye and said he didn’t know anything that went on at WICKED, that he was not one of ‘them’. The realisation hit Newt in a flash, and he froze for a moment, feeling cold. What should he do? No, he couldn’t let anyone know they knew about the devices in their brains. The best course of action would be to pretend that nothing had happened, and to act just as he had before he learned the truth.  
However, after class when Newt went to Stuart to return his books, he found there was a big difference between knowing the best course of action and following it.  
“I just wanted to give you these back,” Newt said, handing back the books Stuart had lent him. “I’ve read them all, and Minho too.”  
“How did you like them?” Stuart’s smile seemed so genuine and warm. Suddenly Newt couldn’t take it anymore. The pretence. The lies. He wanted to smack that stupid grin off Stuart’s face.  
“You knew, the whole time, didn’t you?”  
“Know what?” Stuart asked, still smiling. Still unsuspecting.  
“You knew they put devices in our brains to monitor us.” Stuart’s smile only slipped for half a second, but Newt was watching carefully and caught it. It confirmed everything he had guessed.  
“I’m not sure what you—” Stuart began.  
“Stop lying to me!” Newt yelled, hurling the books to the floor. “I know, ok? I know about the transmission devices and the nanobots. I know all of it. And I especially remember how you were there, during my entire surgery, and never once mentioned that they did anything besides take a biopsy!”  
Finally Stuart was silent. His smile had slid off his face as soon as Newt admitted to knowing about the devices. It was almost as satisfying as if Newt had struck him.  
“You knew they were putting things in our brains, and you didn’t even mention it. Which means you knew it was a secret, you knew what they were for. And you stood there and lied to my face! You said they didn’t tell you anything that was going on.” His emotions were overwhelming him again, and to keep from crying as he had in front of Minho, he focused on how much he wanted to strangle Stuart. Had he ever looked up to this man? Had he ever thought of him as something like a parent? This man was nothing like his parents. He was a liar in the service of child murderers. “Was anything you ever told me true?”  
“You have to remember that everything we do here is to fight the Flare. I don’t expect you to understand—”  
“Don’t talk to me about what I do and don’t understand!” Newt practically spit at him. Stuart seemed to have forgotten that Newt had once admired him exactly because he treated him like someone who would understand. “In fact, don’t speak to me again. Ever. I’m sick of listening to your pathetic lies.” Newt walked away coldly, but inside he was the one who felt pathetic. Stuart probably never thought he was smart, was capable of understanding complex ideas. He had just been flattering him, trying to gain his trust. To what end, Newt wasn’t certain, but he guessed it was another method for WICKED to spy on them. Have the teachers report everything they did, and if they could, their secret thoughts about everything that was going on. And like a fool, Newt had fallen for it. Well, this was the last time he trusted any adult. He had learned his lesson.

* * *

Already enough had happened in the day for it to feel more like a week, but just before evening quiet time, when Newt was once again at his locker, something else peculiar happened.  
Thomas was the only other person in the locker room, fiddling with something inside his locker. Newt was thankful that he’d had the forethought to return Thomas’ id badge very early that morning, before Thomas missed it.  
A man entered the locker room. Newt and Thomas both looked up, but the man turned immediately to Thomas, acting like he couldn’t even see Newt. Newt decided to use his invisibility to his advantage, and instead of leaving, bent down to re-tie his shoe and listen to the conversation.  
“Hey Thomas,” the man said, “there’s a discrepancy on the door entry log for the lab. Did you enter the lab last night at,” he checked his workpad, “0041 hours?” There’s a login with your id at that time, but we didn’t think you were awake. We would’ve just checked the surveillance from last night, but some idiot left the server unplugged so our video for half the night is lost.”  
Newt felt himself go rigid, and he tried to relax and appear normal, on the off chance that anyone looked his way. Inside he was cursing his own stupidity. How could he have overlooked the door entry log? Of course they would keep track of who came in and out of the lab. Now they would know someone unauthorised had been inside, and since Newt had foolishly told Stuart he knew about the devices, it wouldn’t take them long to put two and two together.  
“Oh, yeah, that was me,” Thomas said sheepishly. Newt almost fell over. Why was he lying? “Sorry, I know I’m not supposed to be out in the halls that late, but I thought of a really important idea and I wanted to record it in case I forgot it before morning.”  
“Oh, well if that’s all,” the man said, relieved. “But maybe next time you could just write it down on a piece of paper, or at least let someone know what you’re doing.”  
“Of course. Sure thing.” Thomas was smiling in a reassuring way, as though he were the adult and the man were a child afraid of being in trouble. Just how much power did he have in this place?  
The man left, and Newt stood up to do the same, but before he made it through the door, Thomas called out to him:  
“So, are you going to tell me why you used my id badge to break into the lab last night?”  
Newt was way too tired to deal with this. He had been up all night, and he’d had several emotional encounters that day. He turned to face Thomas, but gave no answer. Just because Thomas had apparently covered for him didn’t mean he was trustworthy, and in his exhausted state, Newt didn’t trust himself to lie reliably.  
“I know it was you. Probably not alone, so I’m guessing Minho helped you, since you guys are pretty much inseparable.”  
“What gives you that idea?” Newt asked calmly, determined to give nothing away until he had decided how much to trust Thomas.  
“What, that you guys are inseparable, or that you broke into the lab?” Thomas grinned, but when Newt’s face remained impassive, he stopped. “Look, I know it was you, ok? If the suspicious way you guys have been snooping around my locker wasn’t enough, I saw the way you froze when that guy was in here asking if I had been in the lab last night. I’m not going to tell on you, ok? So just tell me what you were doing in there.”  
Newt watched Thomas’ face carefully, trying to decide how much to admit. If he had wanted, Thomas could have turned him in already, except that he only had suspicion, no real proof. If Newt gave him a confession, would Thomas tell the other researchers? Or was the chance to get insider information from Thomas worth the risk?  
Newt weighed his words carefully. “Why didn’t you tell us you were putting devices in our brains, and not just taking biopsies?” There. That wasn’t quite an admission of guilt, nothing that would hold up in a court of law, but it should satisfy Thomas and get him talking.  
The barest flicker of surprise crossed Thomas’ face, but to his credit, he didn’t try to dissemble. “You found out about that?” Then, to Newt’s surprise, he seemed to deflate just a tiny bit. For the first time, he looked like a normal kid. “I hated lying to everyone about that. I wanted to just tell the truth from the beginning, but the others said it was better, that they would be too stressed if they knew the truth, and the surgery would go better if they were more relaxed.”  
“And the ones who died? Helen, Neil, and the others?” Newt hadn’t meant to sound quite so accusing, but his anger at the manner of their deaths and the way everything had been swept casually under the rug got the better of him.  
But to his even greater surprise, Thomas didn’t react defensively. Instead, he bowed his head for a moment, and when he looked back up, Newt could see a tear hastily being wiped away just under his eye. “I felt terrible about each and every one of them,” he said quietly. “And I hated how we covered it up. I never would have gone along with it, but they said it would cause mass panic if everyone knew. And for now, they need everyone’s brain waves to be as normal as possible.”  
“But why? What is it for?” Newt burst out, forgetting his carefulness.  
“We need to measure everyone’s brain activity, basically all the time. I… I can’t tell you exactly why. I’m sorry, Newt. It’s highly classified. But it’s for the cure.” Thomas’ look begged Newt to believe him, to accept his answer without arguing.  
“How come you’re allowed to know about it and we’re not?” Newt demanded.  
“I’m not really sure. I think we, that is, Teresa and I, are special somehow.” Thomas’ face turned red, embarrassed to be implying he was more special than Newt. “WICKED decided it, not us,” he added hurriedly.  
“Listen,” Thomas said, “I’m really sorry about the way they’re doing everything. I know I’m part of it, because I’m going along with it, but I hate it. Sometimes I hate—” Thomas cut himself off, but Newt was sure he had been about to say he hated WICKED. Maybe he could be trusted after all. “Anyway, does anyone else know that you know?”  
“Yes,” Newt admitted, blushing. “I accidentally told a teacher that I knew. But just about the devices and the nanobots. Nothing else.”  
“That’s not too bad,” Thomas said, thinking to himself. He turned back to Newt. “Ok, when they ask you how you found out—and that’s when, not if—you have to tell them you overheard me and Teresa talking about brain scans and the surgery and you just guessed the rest, you didn’t actually know. I’ll back you up.”  
“What about Teresa?”  
“Don’t worry about her, I’ll let her know the plan. She’ll go along with it.” Thomas smiled at him, and Newt had to fight the urge to laugh. Thomas had no way of knowing, but the lie he had come up with was ridiculously close to the truth. Well, part of it, anyway.  
Thomas was right. Not five minutes after he had left the locker room, Newt was summoned for an intimidating meeting with some of the WICKED scientists, including Dr Wells.  
“Newt, thank you for meeting with us. There’s nothing to worry about,” she said, which of course made Newt start worrying. He hoped Thomas had had enough time to tell Teresa the plan. He said nothing, waiting for them to reveal what the meeting was about.  
“Newt, the reason we called you here is because we’ve become aware of a… security breach. You mentioned to one of your teachers that you knew about something, something that you don’t have clearance to know about.” That wasn’t a question, so Newt didn’t respond, but looked blankly from person to person. He refused to reveal his hand until forced.  
Dr Wells exchanged looks with her colleagues, then pushed forward doggedly. “Newt, we need to know how you found out about the devices implanted in the students’ brains.”  
Newt exhaled a laugh that he hoped sounded more relieved than forced. “Oh, that,” he said. His acting skills were certainly being tested a lot today. “Well, actually, I didn’t really know. I was angry with Mr Holland,” he acknowledged his fight with Stuart, “and I had heard enough to guess that there was something fishy about the brain surgeries, something we hadn’t been told. Really I was just guessing. I didn’t actually know anything.” He smiled innocently. “So I guess this means I was right? We do have devices in our brains?”   
He was pleased that his words caused them to look guiltily at one another, and one of the scientists whispered angrily, “I told you we shouldn’t have conducted this interview, that he had no real information and we would give him more than he had!” He was quickly shushed by the others.  
Dr Wells spoke again. “But Newt, how did you guess in the first place? What information lead you to suspect anything?”  
Newt chose his words carefully to be as vague as possible while still pretending to be helpful. “Well… I was eavesdropping, I guess… and I heard Thomas and Teresa saying something about brain scans and implanted devices and I kind of just… jumped to conclusions.” He tried to add an embarrassed blush but he wasn’t sure he’d pulled it off. “It makes sense if you think about it,” he continued. “WICKED needs to study us to see what makes us immune, right? So why not study our brain patterns? After all, that’s where the Flare virus affects people, in the brain. The Killzone.” He smiled again, hoping that spouting their stupid made-up WICKED jargon would win him some points.  
The adults in the room all started whispering amongst themselves, and then one of them left. No one said anything, and in a few moments he had returned, Thomas and Teresa in tow.  
Thomas and Teresa surveyed the room, and Newt looked back, trying not to appear guilty. Thomas would back him up, he had said so.  
“What’s this about?” Thomas asked.  
“Have you been discussing high-level security matters where other subjects can hear?” One of the researchers asked.  
“Oh,” Thomas said, ducking his head in embarrassment. “Well, not on purpose. But yeah, sometimes we have to talk about things, and there are always other people around, there’s not that many places to be alone…” he trailed off lamely. Newt actually felt bad for him. In covering for Newt, it looked like he would be taking some of the heat onto himself. Newt wondered, not for the first time, why he was bothering.  
“I would have thought the two of you could use other methods,” one of the researchers said meaningfully. What did that mean? They were clearly talking about another secret Newt didn’t know about, and right in front of him. It was infuriating.  
“Well,” Thomas coughed, glancing at Teresa, “Teresa’s a lot better at that than me, I haven’t really, um, gotten the hang of it, yet.”  
The researchers were looking severely at Thomas, who was looking sheepishly back, and Newt was looking back and forth at all of them and wishing he knew what they were talking about.  
Finally, Dr Wells turned back to Newt. “We’re going to have to insist that you not mention any of this, the devices, the scans, or even this meeting, to any of the other students. You seem very calm about it, so it shouldn’t hurt anything for you to know, but under no circumstances may you tell anyone else. We could have mass panic among the students. Do you understand, Newt?”  
Newt put on his best teacher’s pet face. “Oh yes ma’am, absolutely, I won’t tell a soul.” He stopped just short of clasping his hands together, which he thought might be taking it a step too far.  
Newt couldn’t believe the way they ate up his good-boy act. Internally he laughed at them. Two can play this lying game. You have your secrets, and I have mine. He felt a twinge of regret, remembering how kindly Dr Wells had spoken to him when he first arrived, just after he lost—but she wasn’t lost. She was simply a long way away, waiting for him to return. He pushed the thought out of his head. Dr Wells had also been lying to him from the moment he stepped onto the WICKED compound. Before, even. She didn’t deserve his honesty or his regret.  
Once everyone had left, and he and Thomas were heading back to their respective dorms, Newt thought he could risk a thank-you.  
“Hey,” he said quietly, nudging Thomas with his shoulder, “thanks for backing me up. You didn’t have to do that.”  
“I know,” Thomas answered with a shrug. “In a way I was kind of trying to make up for lying to everyone before. It’s not enough, I know, but it’s something. I want to find the cure, I really do, but sometimes the things WICKED does makes me wonder if…”  
“If it’s worth it,” finished Newt softly. He knew exactly how Thomas felt.  
“You’re a pretty good actor, by the way.” Thomas grinned up at him, then opened his eyes wide in a faux-innocent stare and said in a high-pitched voice, “Golly gee whiz, I would never dream of telling a soul, I swear!”  
Newt laughed, knocking Thomas with his shoulder. “What about you, Mr ‘uh, well I guess I might have talked about that, once or twice’.” He sobered, remembering what had come after that. “I hope I didn’t get you in a lot of trouble. I’ve no idea what that ‘other method’ was about, but it sounded like they were angry with you.”  
Thomas’ grin faded too. “Oh, that. Well, I can’t really tell you about that either, but don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. I just have to try a little harder to—to make something work, that’s all.”  
Both boys fell silent, feeling the weight of WICKED’s secrets come between them once again. But as Thomas walked off toward his dorm and Newt continued toward his, Newt remembered the easy laughter, and the way Thomas had lied to WICKED scientists for him, almost no questions asked; and as he got ready for lights out, he wondered if he had made a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HURRAY first Newtmas interaction!! If this isn't the slowest-building Newtmas story you've ever read, then I don't want to read the one that is because it's probably even more boring than this story LOL. (I guess this would be a good time to tell you that this is going to be a Newtmas story. I can't decide if I should change the tags now or wait until they actually start interacting more.)
> 
> Updated 2/27/18  
> Minor changes only.


	8. truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Newt tells a truth.

When he got up the next morning, Newt felt melancholy, but he wasn’t sure why. In a moment everything that had happened the previous day came rushing back to him, and he knew why. Everything felt completely different to when he had arrived at the WICKED compound, so eager and full of hope. He could barely remember any of his reasons for coming, which had seemed so important before. He still remembered the Flare, and that the fate of the world supposedly hung in the balance of what WICKED was doing here, but it all seemed so abstract. He had never actually seen a person with the Flare, and it was hard to remember why it was so important that a cure be found. In contrast, the evil of WICKED seemed immediate, insupportable.  
He dragged himself to and from his morning classes, not really paying attention, not really caring. Everything seemed pointless. He tried to remind himself why he was there, to help in the search for the cure, but all he could think about was all of WICKED’s lies.  
Newt pulled out a blank piece of paper and wrote at the top: Lies WICKED Tells. He went over the words again and again with his pencil absentmindedly until the stood out boldly against the white of the paper. After staring off into space for a few more minutes, he started a list.  
-we will help in the search for the cure  
No one gets to help, he thought. Except the chosen few. Thomas, Teresa, maybe that Aris kid. Newt wasn’t really sure where he stood in the whole scheme of things.  
-we are important to the cause  
Everyone is expendable, Newt thought lazily. Helen was, Neil was. I am expendable.  
-the surgeries are just biopsies  
They’re actually monitoring our brains quite closely, but they won’t tell us why. Who cares? It probably doesn’t make a difference one way or the other.  
He looked up and saw Minho and Alby approaching him, so quickly he folded the paper up small and stuffed it in his pocket. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt they would worry about him if they saw it, and he didn’t want them to worry.  
“Hey,” Alby said. “How are you doing? Minho told me about what you guys found out yesterday.” Minho nodded. “Are you sure you’re ok?”  
“Why wouldn’t I be ok?” Newt wondered what time it was. Was it lunch time? Was he late for lunch? Was that why they had come to find him?  
“You’ve been kind of out of it all morning,” Minho said, watching him closely. “Are you coming to lunch?” So it was lunch time. Newt stood up mechanically.  
“Yeah, I’m coming. I was just thinking about an assignment I need to do.”  
He could barely follow the conversation through lunch. At least Alby and Minho finally seemed to be getting along. If he had done nothing else, he had done that much.  
Newt only picked at his food. He wasn’t that hungry, and nothing tasted good.  
After lunch, Minho managed to wake him up from his thoughts by mentioning the library.  
“Since you’re such a fan of physical books, I thought maybe we could go have a look. Everything that’s down there they also have in the digital library, but they have special editions and rare books and stuff like that. I don’t think they let you take them out of the library, but it might be cool just to look at them.”  
Newt’s head popped up. “There’s a library? Like an actual physical library? Why have I never heard about it until now?”  
Minho shrugged, looking at the ceiling. “I was probably supposed to show you stuff like that when I gave you the tour, you know, when you first came here. But I probably forgot.”  
“Minho!” Newt cried, partly upset, partly amused.  
“Hey, it’s not my fault, I only just found out you love books! You’re supposed to tell your friends shit like that,” Minho teased, clearly just happy Newt was finally responding to something.  
“Is there anything else you’ve been hiding from me?” Newt joked back.  
“Oh yeah, there’s also a digital media library and a media room where you can go watch movies during free time.”  
“What?!” Newt slugged Minho in the arm. “You loser! We could’ve been watching films this whole time.”  
“Nah, the films that they have are all old. I’ll show you later, but you haven’t been missing anything.” Minho rubbed his arm where Newt had hit him in exaggerated pain. “So what d’ya say, want to go check out the books?”  
“Alright, sure, let’s go see the books.” Strangely enough, Newt was feeling better. He hadn’t realised how much he had missed reading physical books until Stuart, and even though that memory was tarnished by the discovery that Stuart had been lying to him the whole time, he had still enjoyed reading the stories and holding the books in his hands, feeling the pages. He had read several books from the digital library on his e-reader, but it just wasn’t the same. He had learned to read and to love reading with physical books, and the e-reader would never be quite as good in his mind. He wondered if it would be different if he had grown up using the e-reader.  
When they got to the library, Newt walked up and down the aisles, marvelling that there were so many books in one place. As Minho had said, they were all first editions or special editions or rare in some way. Newt felt as though each one held promise, excitement, adventure.  
One in particular caught his eye. It was a special edition illustrated copy of Peter Pan. He pulled it from the shelf and opened it. It fell open to an illustration of the crocodile, and suddenly Newt was back at his home, listening to his mother read to him. His mother had always said that as a girl she hated the part when Wendy and the boys left Neverland because they left Peter all alone, but now Newt realised that was his favourite part, because they went back to Mr and Mrs Darling. Their parents. In that moment Newt would have traded almost anything to see his parents again.  
He turned the pages. The book was in good condition; the pages felt thick and creamy under his fingers, high-quality paper. The illustrations were exquisite. He sat down there on the floor and began reading it, too excited to move to one of the tables.  
Every paragraph was like both a healing dose and a shot of poison to his heart. It was both wonderful and painful to be so vividly reminded of his mother. This, he remembered, was why he had come. Not to save the world. To save just one person.  
He kept reading, and before he knew it hours had passed. He looked up and saw Minho sitting across from him, propped up against the bookshelf, reading a first edition Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  
“Alby went to class,” Minho whispered, “but we didn’t want to disturb you. You were really into your book. I don’t really care about class anyway. I should’ve come down here years ago.”  
Newt stretched and looked around. “Why do they have all these books anyway?”  
Minho shrugged. “There’s a rumour that they have a bunch of artwork, famous paintings and sculptures and stuff, too, and that the back-up plan is to kill everyone with the Flare and just start civilization over, so they’re preserving all this culture and history in case that happens. Nobody knows for sure if that’s true though.”  
Newt looked around, taking in all the books. “That’s horrible. It’s like they really don’t care who lives and who dies, as long as they get what they want. They never have just one plan, do they? It’s always plans within plans.” He sighed deeply. “I’m glad we get to read the books though.”  
“Like I said, no one knows if it’s true. It could just be a rumour,” Minho said, returning to his book.  
Several minutes later, Minho called, “Hey Newt?”  
“Yeah?”  
“Should we tell the others what we know?”  
“I don’t know,” Newt answered despondently. “I sort of feel like we should, but it wouldn’t really help, would it? It would just upset everyone and they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it anyway. Plus,” he continued, “not to be selfish, but they’d know it was me who told. I was warned last night not to tell anyone.”  
“What do you mean warned? By who?” Minho looked up in alarm.  
“Didn’t I tell you? I accidentally let someone know I knew about the implanted devices, and then they wanted to know how I found out. It’s ok though,” he said hastily as Minho opened his mouth in horror, “I told them I just overheard Thomas and Teresa talking about it, and they bought it. Oh, and Thomas knows that we know, but he promised not to turn us in.”  
“How do we know we can trust him?” Minho demanded. “He’s closer to WICKED than anyone!”  
“Well, he’s already lied for us,” Newt said, “and he seemed sincere when he said he felt bad about everything WICKED is doing. I think I trust him.”  
Minho rolled his eyes. “Great, well if you trust him, then that settles it,” he muttered sarcastically, turning back to his book again.  
Newt and Minho stayed in the library for the rest of the day, and after a few hours Alby found them again.  
“You guys are still here? What’s so great about this place anyway?” Alby said, but he was smiling, so Newt decided to take it as a joke.  
“I was just about done anyway,” he said, closing Peter Pan and replacing it on the shelf. Together the three of them walked back to the main area, back to their dorm rooms.  
“Are you feeling better now?” Alby asked Newt cautiously. “I told your afternoon teachers that you were sick, and that’s why you didn’t come to class. I thought maybe you needed a day off. How are you feeling, really?” Alby and Minho both looked at Newt intently, waiting for his answer.  
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just… tired. Tired of the lies, tired of everything. Just… tired.” He stopped walking and leaned against the wall, then slid down and sat on the floor there in the hallway. Alby and Minho looked at each other, then sat down with him. For a moment they simply sat in each other’s company, not speaking.  
Suddenly Newt had a strong urge to say something true, something from before they had all come to WICKED.  
“My name’s not Newt,” he almost whispered. “It’s Ned.” He looked up at Alby and Minho, waiting to see if they accepted his offering.  
“My name was Chibuzo,” Alby finally said. “My family and friends called me Chibs. Or at least they did before they all went crazy and started trying to eat each other.”  
“My name was Eun,” Minho offered.  
Once the barrier was broken, it became easier for them all to share about their lives before WICKED. Newt could tell the other two boys were just as relieved to finally be telling someone as he was.  
Alby had lived in Canada with his immediate family. Most of them had survived the sun flares, although he had extended family and several friends in the US who had all been killed when the sun roasted the planet.  
“They were fried to a crisp; never had a chance,” he said matter-of-factly, like someone who had long ago gotten over the injustices of the world. “But my mom and dad, my older brother, my best friend, they all survived. Sometimes I think they were actually the unlucky ones. They survived the flares only to be infected by the Flare a few years later.” His eyes took on a haunted look, and Newt knew he was remembering terrible events. “I watched them all slowly go crazy. People in our settlement just started getting sick out of the blue, and then everyone was going crazy around me. For a while I thought I was going crazy too. I didn’t know anyone could be immune, so I thought I must have what everyone else had, and it was almost like I went a little crazy because I expected to go crazy. Everything was just so messed up, I didn’t know what to do, and I was so young, I didn’t really understand what was going on.” His eyes glistened as he remembered. “But eventually everyone else died or went off somewhere, completely out of their minds, and I just kept living on and on in this nightmare. Finally once everyone else was gone, that was when I sort of became sane again, and I realized that I must not have ever been infected in the first place. The stuff that happened though, when everyone was sick… it was bad. Real bad.” He shivered. “I don’t like to think about it. Anyway, by that time I was about seven or eight years old, and I managed to forage for food and live by myself for a few months before some WICKED scientists turned up and found me, brought me here.”  
If anything, Minho’s story was worse. “I was only three years old when the flares hit. I was with my parents, I think we normally lived in the US but we were in Seoul because that was where both their parents, my grandparents, lived. I don’t even remember the flares, maybe we weren’t as affected by it, but then once the rest of the world went to shit, our city pretty much followed suit. I know there were still police and stuff, but everyone knew they were corrupt, and everyone had to basically fend for themselves.” He closed his eyes briefly, remembering. “I have the barest memories of living in my mom’s parents’ house. I think we were there for about a year and a half. Anyway, there was a lot of chaos and looting and…” his voice dropped to a whisper. “When I was five, I saw my parents killed, right in front of me. A gang of crazy guys broke into our house and beat them to death. Not Flare-crazy, just opportunist-crazy. There was nothing I could do, I just stood there crying while my parents’ blood was splattered everywhere.” Minho’s face turned red and he was breathing heavily, but his eyes remained dry. “And then one guy turned to me, with my mom’s brains on his hands, as he was taking all our food, and he just… laughed. He laughed after he murdered my parents in front of my eyes!” Minho’s voice was still deliberately even, but he looked like he wanted to scream and rage, and he still refused to cry. Newt thought that maybe he hadn’t allowed himself to cry ever again since that terrible day.  
“I know man, I know,” Alby said, tears falling from his own eyes. “The world is messed up.” Newt felt a deep feeling of grief and horror for what Minho had been through, the senseless violence and the unfairness that his parents were killed not by natural disaster or disease, but by fellow humans who had simply not valued their lives enough, and he wanted to do something to comfort his friend. He reached out and put his hand on Minho’s shoulder, trying to communicate through his touch everything that he couldn’t find the words to say.  
Minho got his breathing back under control and continued his story. “So after that, I pretty much had to fend for myself. At least most of the crazy people left me alone. I guess they thought a little kid wasn’t important or enough of a threat to bother with. I joined up with this gang of kids living on the streets. They were all orphans like me; a few were younger but most were older. But we helped each other out, watched each other’s backs. We had to steal and do a lot worse to get food, but we did it to survive. I’ve done some things I’m not too proud of, but if I had to go back, I’d do it all over again, because it kept me alive.” He almost glared at them, daring to suggest he had been wrong. When they didn’t challenge him, Minho went on. “Anyway, I guess the Flare virus took longer to make it all the way over there, because it hadn’t showed up yet, and I lived there for a few years. We had heard rumours of it, but then these WICKED scientists showed up and started testing everyone. When they found out I was immune, they took me here.”  
Alby and Minho turned to Newt. “What about you?” Alby asked.  
“I was pretty lucky, I guess,” Newt answered, and as odd as it felt to say that, he knew it was true. “I used to live with my parents in London, but we had driven up to Scotland on holiday. I don’t remember London at all, or the solar flares, I only know about that part because my parents told me. They saw the warning for the flares on the news, and then about six minutes later it got really hot, but nothing like what it must have been closer to the equator. We had rented a house for the holiday, but we ended up just staying there. We were pretty isolated, but we had a lot of food, and we were able to start some vegetable gardens and keep some sheep, so everything was fine, until…” Newt swallowed hard. He had never talked about what had happened to his dad before, and he wasn’t sure if he could do it without breaking down. He pushed himself to keep talking, thinking that after what Alby and Minho had shared, he could open up to them as well. “These… I don’t know, bandits, came, maybe three years after the flares happened. They were almost like old-fashioned pirates. I think they were sailing around the North Sea and Baltic Sea and raiding any towns or settlements they came across. Well, they found us, and they tried to take all our food, but my dad wouldn’t let them. And they… they killed him.” Newt could see it as clearly as if it were happening all over again. “They had guns.” His voice sounded strangely calm, detached. “They shot him, five times. He had so many holes in him, but I still believed he could get better. I didn’t know any better.” Newt couldn’t go any further as the sadness that for so long he had pushed deep inside and ignored welled up inside of him and overwhelmed him. He could still see the look on his father’s face as the light drained from his eyes, and he didn’t think he would ever forget. Tears filled his eyes and spilled over at the memory that was seared into his brain. Minho and Alby watched him, not saying anything, but with their eyes communicating that they understood. They knew what it was like to watch the people you cared about most in the entire world die.  
Finally Newt got his emotions back under control and wiped his eyes. “After that my mum went a bit berserk. She managed to take a gun off one of the nutters and shot two of them before the others scarpered. I’m still not sure how she did it, but I guess it was one of those mother-lifting-the-car-off-her-children things. She had just seen my dad die too, and she knew she had to protect me. And ever since then it was just the two of us. There were some other people scattered about a few miles away, but we all mostly kept to ourselves. We didn’t even know about the Flare, we were so isolated, until these WICKED scientists came a few years later and wanted to test me.”  
“Wait, so you still have a mom who’s alive?” Minho asked incredulously. “I figured we were all orphans. You just left her and came with some random scientists?”  
“Well, so did you!” Newt replied defensively.  
“Yeah, but I didn’t have a lot of options, did I? I was living on the streets with no family and a life expectancy of a few years, tops. How could you have just left your mom like that?”  
Newt felt his face grow red as he struggled to justify himself. “It was for the cure! I thought I could help. Besides, my mum’s not immune, and she could still catch the Flare! If she does, I want there to be a cure for her.” Newt couldn’t bear the thought that he had left his mother all alone for nothing. There had to be a greater good to justify it.  
“Leave him alone, Minho,” Alby said. Newt looked at him gratefully. “He did what he thought was right. It’s not his fault WICKED turned out to be a bunch of liars.”  
“Well, since you have a mom, and we don’t, you have to share your mom,” Minho said in almost a joking tone. “What’s she like?”  
“She’s…” Newt trailed off, wondering how to describe his mother. “She’s wonderful and kind and loving.” He had to keep stopping himself from using past tense. He had every reason to hope his mother was still alive; the Flare hadn’t been anywhere near where they had been living, and so few people went there, surely it wouldn’t spread there any time soon. “She would get really sad sometimes though, mostly after… after dad died. Most of the time she could keep going, but I think she was trying to pretend to be happy for my sake, and sometimes she just got too tired to pretend.” He thought for a while, straining to remember any detail he could. “She liked to listen to music, all kinds of music, but especially The Beatles.”  
“The who?” Minho asked.  
“The Beatles? They’re this really old rock-and-roll group? I thought everyone knew about them, like Mozart and Beethoven.”  
Minho rolled his eyes. “Sorry I didn’t have time to advance my musical education while living on the streets of Seoul,” he said.  
“Oh,” was all Newt could say, embarrassed. He was suddenly keenly aware that as bad as had been some of the events he had lived through, he had been very lucky in some aspects.  
“Don’t be a jerk, Minho, or he won’t tell us any more stories,” Alby said, punching Minho lightly on the shoulder. “Keep going,” he nodded to Newt.  
“Anyway,” Newt continued, trying to hide his embarrassment, “she had this weird thing about CDs, she liked playing CDs even though they’re totally obsolete.”  
“So kind of like you and books,” said Minho.  
“Yeah,” Newt grinned. “I think I got that from her as well. She said she liked having the physical album, not just a digital copy of it on a computer. And she would play the CDs on this really old CD player that was at the house. She had left most of her CDs behind in London, but she took some of her Beatles albums with her on holiday, so she still had them. We would listen to them over and over. I probably still remember most of the words.”  
By this time, some of the other boys and girls had started coming down the hallway and caught sight of the three boys sitting and talking. Some ignored them and kept going, but a few stopped to see what was happening. One of them was Chuck, the 7-year-old Newt and Minho had talked to only the day before.  
“What are you guys doing?” asked Chuck.  
“Newt’s telling us about his mommy and we’re listening like pathetic saps because we miss our mommies oh so much,” Minho answered, only a little sarcastically. Newt supposed that was practically inviting by Minho’s usual standards.  
“I have a mom, too,” Chuck supplied hopefully. “Or at least, I did before. She might be dead by now. I don’t know. She probably caught the Flare.” His face fell, and he looked so sad that even Minho didn’t say anything.  
“Here, you can stay and listen with us,” Alby offered, patting the ground next to him for Chuck to sit. Chuck flopped down gratefully. Before Newt could continue, though, more boys came up.  
“What’s going on here?” asked Jack, with Winston, Siggy, Jeff, and Zart coming up close behind him.  
Minho sighed in resignation. “It’s freaking story hour. We’re all sad about our pathetic lives and lack of parents so we’re listening to stories about Newt’s mom.” Without further invitation, the other boys sat down, looking to Newt expectantly. A few seconds later, some girls joined the group. No one said it, but everyone seemed eager to hear about anyone’s life that was even the tiniest bit normal, free from the threat of the Flare. Newt was reminded vividly of the scene from Peter Pan inn which the Lost Boys are all gathered around Wendy to hear a story about mothers, pretending that they remember their own mothers, each boy thinking his mother was the best. We really are a bunch of Lost Boys and Girls, he thought sadly.  
“My mum liked to listen to this one album when she was especially sad. I don’t remember the name of it, but I remember the picture it had on it. But she would listen to it and then it was like she had the strength to face life again.”  
“What’s he talking about?” Zart asked loudly, and then Newt had to explain about The Beatles and the CDs all over again, but this time several of the others knew who The Beatles were so he didn’t feel so foolish.  
“Could you sing some of it for us?” Marie asked shyly.  
Minho snorted and said, “If anyone starts singing I’m leaving.” Several of the others laughed at that, and Newt was relieved. He wasn’t ready for any kind of musical performance just yet.  
“One time she was so sad she couldn’t get out of bed, she just lay there with the curtains drawn and the sheets over her head. I was scared, I thought something really bad was wrong with her. I went into her room but it was like she couldn’t even see me. So I went to the room where she kept the CD player and brought it into her room, and I found the album with the picture I knew on it, and I put it in the CD player and pushed play. It was like the music slowly brought her back to life, and she seemed to see me for the first time.” Newt stared off into space, remembering. “Then she got out of bed and hugged me tight for a long time. I could tell, that no matter how sad she got, she still really, really loved me.” He paused, a little uncomfortable at sharing such a precious moment, but he knew all these kids had so few happy memories, it seemed wrong to keep his to himself. “And then she just started dancing around the room, and I was too, not even dancing really, but running around wildly and swinging our arms and singing along to the music. When I looked at her face, it was like she’d forgotten all the bad things that had happened in the past few years.” Newt fell silent, soaking in the memory.  
“I think your mom had clinical depression,” Jeff said, as though offering his professional opinion.  
“Yes, well, looking back on it, that’s probably true,” Newt replied, not sure whether to be amused or offended, “but I was only eight years old, so I didn’t fully understand what was going on.” He had wondered about that a few times. Maybe before the flares happened, his mother had taken some kind of medicine, but with the world in chaos she no longer had access to the medication she needed.  
Newt told a few more memories of his mother before a WICKED scientist came along and the group had to break up, unsure if this kind of gathering were allowed. But they had the memory now, and Newt and Minho and Alby had started something. The other kids began talking more about their lives before WICKED, and somehow that meant WICKED’s hold over them broke just a little. It felt good, like taking a piece of themselves back.  
The very next day two of the Marys, Mary J and Mary L, approached Newt during free time. “Will you tell us another story?” Mary J asked hopefully.  
“Sure,” Newt answered, taken aback. “What kind of story do you want to hear?”  
“Anything,” Mary L answered. “As long as it’s about family.” The kids here really are starved for family, Newt thought.  
“We used to keep sheep,” he said. “I could tell you about the time one of the sheep got out of the pen and my mum and I had to chase it, trying to lasso it.”  
“Yes, please,” the girls said, smiling, and Newt began his tale.  
Soon a crowd had gathered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *points to random audience member* You get a tragic backstory! *points to another audience member* You get a tragic backstory! *raises hands to the heavens* Everyone gets a tragic backstory!!  
> But in all seriousness, this chapter is basically just Newt being gluey *cries*  
> Also, just btw, the scene with Alby, Minho, and Newt sharing about their families was actually the first scene I ever wrote for this piece. I'm kind of skipping around and writing it all out of order, which is part of the reason why I don't update for months and then do four chapters in one day (sorry again about that). But basically I've been writing toward this scene since I started posting.
> 
> Updated 2/27/18  
> Minor changes only.


	9. immunes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Newt learns a terrible secret about the immune subjects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So from here on out is all new stuff. (Well, some of it was written back the first time, but I hadn't posted it yet, and most of it was outlined.)  
> It's been a long time since I've worked on this, so it's taken me a while to get back into the swing of it, and I might get some cannon details wrong or forget something I planned to do if I didn't put it in my outline. I have no idea how long this is going to be but I'm mainly just trying to finish it, no matter how bad it is. I still have quite a bit written that I never posted because I tend to skip around when writing, and there are a lot of middle bits missing, so I'm trying to fill in the missing bits before I can post the big dramatic scenes that I've already written haha.

In many ways, talking about their pasts helped them cope, but there was always an unspoken agreement between the students that they should try to keep these conversations as secret as possible from WICKED. The fact that they had been given the false names and encouraged to forget their pasts in the first place made them think WICKED wouldn’t approve, and no one wanted to find out for sure.  
Newt was able to pass several more months this way without much incident. He passed his eleventh birthday. It had been over two years now since he had last seen his mother. He missed her more and more with each passing day. In fact, talking about her so often made him miss her even more, but Newt felt as though he needed to miss her. It was the only connection he had to her anymore.  
Without quite realising when, Newt sank back into the melancholy state he had been in after first discovering the brain implants. He tried to remind himself why he was here, to help find a cure, but that excuse was starting to wear thin. He felt so disconnected from the actual process of finding the cure that it seemed very abstract, and he couldn’t quite force himself to care about it as much as he had before. All he knew was that they were observing his and the others’ brain activity nearly every second of every day, and it just made him feel paranoid.  
The more he thought about the brain scans, too, the more it bothered him. Something didn’t quite add up. He thought about what he had learned in his virology and immunology courses. To develop a vaccine, you usually needed an attenuated form of the virus, or at least specific marker proteins from the virus’s protein coat so that the body’s immune system could learn to recognise the virus and fight it off before it took hold. To develop an actual cure, they should be looking at ways to limit or stop the virus spreading from cell to cell. So where did the brain scans come in?  
As weeks passed, Newt became disinterested in his schoolwork and started to fall behind. He had applied himself so diligently in the beginning under the belief that when he caught up, he would be helping with the research for the cure, but now that he realised that was never going to happen, he just didn’t see the point in trying anymore.  
It got to the point that one day Dr Wells, who was now teaching his class intermediate immunology, kept him back after her lecture.  
She began by considering him seriously, though not unkindly, for several seconds before finally speaking.  
“I must say I’m a bit surprised to be having this conversation with you of all people, Newt,” she said gravely. “You were so studious when you first arrived here, and you’ve always been near the top of the class. But lately I’ve been sensing a very uncharacteristic lack of effort, and you’ve missed handing in your last three assignments. Are you feeling all right?”  
“I’m fine,” Newt said automatically, before he had a chance to consider if it were true. Dr Wells continued to survey him, waiting for more, but he didn’t feel like saying anything else, so he simply looked back at her with a blank face.  
When Dr Wells realised he wasn’t going to speak again, she sighed and looked down at her desk, absent-mindedly shuffling some papers.  
“Well, I don’t think I need to belabour the point, but you should consider this an official warning to improve your effort towards your studies,” she said.  
“Or what?” Newt asked. “Ma’am,” he added quickly. He hoped she didn’t think he was challenging her, but his tone hadn’t been hostile. He was genuinely curious what sort of incentive WICKED would employ. “Would I get kicked out?” he continued, wondering if that wasn’t in fact what he wanted.  
“Of course not!” Dr Wells exclaimed. “Newt,” she looked at him even more intensely, her eyes searching him before asking again, “are you quite sure you’re all right?”  
Newt hesitated. He honestly wasn’t sure himself. Instead of answering, he asked, “Dr Wells, can I ask you something?”  
“Go ahead,” Dr Wells answered.  
“It’s just,” Newt said slowly, wondering how exactly to put into words his thoughts of late, “I know I’m not supposed to know about the implants. But I already do know about them, so surely it wouldn’t hurt to tell me just a little bit more, to tell me what they’re for, why they’re looking at our brain activity? I just don’t see how this is supposed to help find a cure.”  
Dr Wells didn’t answer for several moments, and for a while Newt thought perhaps she wasn’t going to answer at all. But then finally she spoke.  
“I can’t tell you anything you’re not authorised to know, not directly. I’ve been expressly forbidden from doing so.” Newt took a deep breath, preparing to argue. “However,” she continued, cutting him off, “if you were to make guesses or assumptions based on what you already know, I haven’t been forbidden from confirming those guesses.” She folded her hands on top of her desk and waited, as Newt gathered his thoughts.  
“Okay. So. The Flare virus attacks neurons in the brain, causing the hosts to go insane. We know that much,” he began. “What we need to know to find a cure is why it doesn’t affect immunes. So my amateur guess would be that immunes can produce some antibody that helps them fight off the virus, or else that their T cells happen to have receptors that respond to the virus and destroy it. But what I don’t understand is how looking at our brain activity has anything to do with that.” Newt paused, looking at his instructor hesitantly.  
She nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right so far,” she said. “The brain scans don’t directly have to do with finding a cure.” Newt noticed the emphasis she placed on the word “directly”, and his thoughts started whirring.  
“If the brain scans aren’t directly related to the cure,” he said, thinking out loud now, “then they must be indirectly related. I guess they could be looking at how the Flare affects the brain activity of the immunes? So they would need to know what normal brain activity looked like, as a control, before introducing the Flare as a variable. And it did say ‘Baseline’ on—” Newt stopped abruptly, realising he had almost revealed he had seen files he wasn’t supposed to have seen. He glanced at Dr Wells, but if she had noticed, she didn’t show any sign, so he hurried on. “I mean, it makes sense they would need a baseline of normal activity to measure against. But then wouldn’t they also need to compare it to the brain activity of people who weren’t immune, so they would know the difference?”  
Newt was almost positive he saw something flash in Dr Wells’ eyes when he said that, something that looked remarkably like alarm. He must be on to something. “So they could be planning to do the same scans on infected people. But in order to know what they were looking at, they would also need a baseline for those people, before they were infected.” Newt noticed Dr Wells had gone very still. “So are they going to get non-immune, uninfected people to do all the same tests, and then deliberately infect them with the Flare and see what differences there are between the brain activity of immunes and non-immunes? That seems highly unethical, not to mention dangerous.” Newt frowned. “And anyway I still don’t see how knowing what the difference in brain activity is helps find a cure. The immunity isn’t in the brain activity, it’s in the biochemical properties of the immune system.”  
Dr Wells was nodding slowly. “I don’t think it will do any harm to tell you,” she said, “that the order to carry out the implant procedure came from the higher levels of WICKED administration. From the Chancellor himself, in fact.” Newt had heard of the Chancellor, a man named Kevin Anderson, but he had never met him or even talked to someone who had. Apparently he was too important to involve himself in the day-to-day operations at the WICKED compound. “Sometimes,” Dr Wells continued, “when you’re part of an organisation like WICKED, you just have to follow the chain of command. There are a lot of things going on, and a lot of factors, and even I don’t know all of it, only the people at the top see the full picture. The Chancellor and administration staff are very intelligent people, Newt. We just have to trust that they know what they’re doing.”  
“But you’re a professor of immunology!” Newt burst out. “You’ve studied this kind of thing for years! You should be able to see, even with just part of the picture, that it doesn’t make any sense! I think they’re going about this all wrong, they’re not even looking at the right things, and – ” Newt stopped, ashamed of his outburst and that he had inadvertently accused Dr Wells of not knowing her own subject. When he looked up at her, however, she didn’t look angry. In fact, Newt would’ve sworn she almost looked relieved.  
“They know what they’re doing,” she repeated softly. Then she stood up, indicating that the conversation was over.  
Newt stood up hastily as well; he was already late for his next lecture. As he hurried to meet up with his classmates, he kept playing over their conversation in his mind. Newt couldn’t help feeling like he had been on the verge of realising something important, but had just missed it. He sat glassy-eyed through the entirety of his next lecture, not taking in a word the professor was saying, and thought about everything they had both said. Why had she looked so relieved at the end? The question nagged at him, refusing to leave him alone.  
Then suddenly it occurred to him: she had looked so relieved because she hadn’t wanted to tell him something. Something she was afraid he would guess, but that he hadn’t. And it had been right around the time he started talking about testing non-immunes that she had started to look worried.  
WICKED were planning on testing non-immunes, as horribly unethical as it sounded. But why would she be so worried about him finding that out, with everything that he already knew about WICKED’s methods, which were questionable at best? Unless…  
Newt felt a chill steal over him as it hit him. WICKED weren’t just planning on testing non-immunes. They’d already started.  
Not all of the subjects were immune.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter starts to touch on the main problem I had with the book series, which is that the explanation for how WICKED was going about finding a cure made absolutely no sense. I don't want to get too much into it yet because spoilers but I came up with a theory that I think explains what happens in the book continuity and makes way more sense (to me, at least).


End file.
